Remote Sensing Activities

The radiation budget and the energy balance was estimated in the spatial domain using satellite images from different sensors that feature bands in the shortwave (0.3 to 3 microns) and the longwave (> 4 microns) domain. For this ASTER data from 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008 and LANDSAT TM and ETM+ data from 1984, 2000, 2001 and 2004 were used. Several methods for the estimation of the heat fluxes (turbulent sensible and latent heat flux, soil/storage heat flux) were investigated and compared to the in situ measured values.

ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) is an multispectral imaging instrument mounted on the Terra satellite, which is part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS).  ASTER features several bands in the thermal infrared.

The serie of LANDSAT satellites are reasearch satellites also from NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS). LANDSAT TM and ETM feature each one thermal band, what allows to estimate the actual surface temperatures and therewith broadband surface emission of Earth surface.

During the field campaign from November 2007 to February 2008, 8 satellite images were acquired by the ASTER satellite (NASA).

Further two scenes  by CHRIS/PROBA (ESA) were used to estimate urban BRF effects of Cairo. PROBA is a technology demonstration mission of the European Space Agency, hosting the hyperspectral Earth Observation instrument CHRIS, whose objective is to collect BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) data. The CHRIS data will be used for the estimation of urban directional spectral reflectances at the example of Cairo. The work will be done as a Category-1 Principal Investigator of ESA.