Evaluation of the airborne imaging spectrometer for remote sensing of forest stand conditions

Five pairs of plots were established in forest stands with one of each pair trenched and covered to prevent precipitation from reaching the tree roots. High winds and falling limbs destroyed the covers on three of the plots. The two remaining plots were in a red pine plantation and in a natural stand of sugar maple. Trees in both plots developed levels of moisture stress more than nine bars higher than control trees on the dates of overflights with the Airborne Imaging Spectrometer (AIS) and the Collins' Airborne Spectroradiometer (CAS). Hemispherical reflectance from stressed and control trees was measured with a Beckman DK2A spectrophotometer. On the day of the AIS overflight, stressed maple foliage was less reflective than the control from 1000 to 1300 nm, but more reflective at wavelengths longer than 1300 nm. Pine foliage was less reflective than the control from 1000 to 1600 nm, but the difference was small at wavelengths longer than 1350 nm. AIS data collected showed brightness values for both maple and pine to be lower than for the controls from 1000 to 1300 nm. CAS data were used to determine the gain in species identification accuracy obtainable with high spectral resolution data.