Airborne Remote Sensing Facility
Parent Body: Natural Environment Research Council, Science Programmes Directorate, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 1EU

Principal Functions
To obtain remotely sensed data to support environmental research.

General Details
The NERC Airborne Remote Sensing Facility provides a responsive synoptic remote sensing service for marine research and survey/monitoring purposes. High spatial resolution data consisting of multi-spectral imagery of the reflected radiation from the water surface in the visible, infra-red and thermal bands of the electro-magnetic spectrum and aerial survey photography are provided on a multi-temporal basis. Data are accurately positioned using GPS and can be rectified to grid coordinates or maps/charts. All remote sensing instrumentation is calibrated to national standards and multi-spectral data can therefore be reduced to absolute reflected radiance.

Specification
Piper Navajo Chieftain Aircraft equipped with:

JPS OCTOPUS ADU GPS position and attitude referencing system. Azimuth Systems Integrated Data System – processing and display. Itres Research Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI): spectral range 400–915nm, 288 spectral channels at 1.8nm intervals, spatial and spectral modes of data retrieval. Daedalus Airborne Thermatic Mapper (ATM): spectral range 420–13,000nm, 11 channels – six of which equate to the Landsat TM satellite channels.

Wild RC-10 survey camera: colour, monochromatic or false colour infra-red photography. Multi-spectral data can be acquired at spatial resolutions of 1–10m.

Special Features
The NERC airborne facility allows rapid response, temporally flexible data acquisition at high spectral and spatial resolutions. The service is available to the marine research community free of charge – subject to peer review – and can also be chartered for commissioned or commercial projects. It is possible to acquire data over most of the continental shelf, but not beyond.

Future Plans
Enhancement of the airborne platform is expected in October 2000 to enable significantly improved endurance/range and instrument/personnel payload capacity. This will allow synoptic data collection both over the continental shelf and in the ocean regime; basic atmospheric research capabilities will also be available.

Availability
The facility is available to other bodies in both the private and public sector. Time is allocated either by peer review or on a commissioned basis.

Charging Basis
Charging rates are subject to negotiation.

Contact Information
Mr P W Purcell
NERC Scientific Services
Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon
Wilts
SN2 1EU
Telephone:  01793 411649  Fax: 01793 411610
Email:      p.purcell@nerc.ac.uk
Web Site: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/nss