| Hyperspectral Imaging Available
Now Mr Bob Agar's Australian Geological and
Remote Sensing Services in Perth has stolen a march on his rivals by being the first
company to offer hyperspectral imaging of the Australian land mass. Agar announced 28
October that he had forged an agreement with Geophysical and Environmental Research of New
York. The two companies will work together to bring GER's DMS 3715 airborne imaging
spectrometer to Australia in 1997, once it has completed its current deployment in the
People's Republic of China.
GER is a specialist in airborne imaging systems aimed at
environmental and geological applications. These include high resolution airborne radar
system as well as hyperspectral imaging.
The imager has 39 channels, configurable by the user in two
modes. In one, 13 channels are available in the short wave infra red and 24 in the visible
and near infrared. In the other bands , 24 are available in the VNIR, and 5 in the SWIR.
In both modes, a further two channels are allocated to the long end of the infra red band
(3-13 mm).
The SWIR bands are generally held to be particularly useful for
mapping minerals, particularly hydrothermal alteration minerals, a range of clays and some
industrially useful specimens. The VNIR, on the other hand, is particularly useful for
mapping environmental and agricultural scenes. Workers can discriminate stress,
infestation and disease from normal vegetation, as well as map the abundance of various
vegetation types.
AGARSS brings considerable expertise in airborne surveying to the
table. Agar himself was involved with the development and operation of scanners in Western
Australia, and the company is currently using the GER instrument in a gold exploration
project in Peru.
The company says spectral surveys will be priced around US$25-30
per square kilometre. The scanner cost around $7000 a day to operate, and the aircraft
around $1000 an hour Data preprocessing costs about $4000 / gigabyte. Enquires to ger@agarss.com.au or on +61-9-291-7929. |
