Soil polarization data collected for the global undisturbed/disturbed Earth (GUIDE) program

A key product of the global undisturbed/disturbed earth (GUIDE) program is the development of a soils database of broadband, hyperspectral, and polarized data. As a part of the GUIDE program, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) conducted a testing series involving a large variety of instrumentation at several sites at the Yuma Test Center (YTC) in fiscal year 2015 under the auspices of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (now the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency), generating approximately 17 terabytes of data. Most of this data, available through the ERDC, comprises hyperspectral polarimetric scientific data in the visible, near-infrared, shortwave infrared, and longwave infrared bands. As part of this testing series the performance of six handheld devices was characterized. We discuss the process of this data collection at YTC focusing on the polarimetric data, including the two handheld devices that relied on polarization for detection. Although some other polarization states discriminate soils better in some other wavelengths, for certain visible and near-infrared bands the Stokes S2 parameter provided the best discrimination.