Thermal remote sensing from Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner data in the framework of the SPARC and SEN2FLEX projects: an overview

The AHS (Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner) in- strument has 80 spectral bands covering the visible and near infrared (VNIR), short wave infrared (SWIR), mid infrared (MIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) spectral range. The instru- ment is operated by Instituto Nacional de TAerospa- cial (INTA), and it has been involved in several field cam- paigns since 2004. This paper presents an overview of the work performed with the AHS thermal imagery provided in the framework of the SPARC and SEN2FLEX campaigns, carried out respec- tively in 2004 and 2005 over an agricultural area in Spain. The data collected in both campaigns allowed for the first time the development and testing of algorithms for land sur- face temperature and emissivity retrieval as well as the es- timation of evapotranspiration from AHS data. Errors were found to be around 1.5 K for land surface temperature and 1 mm/day for evapotranspiration.