The Carnegie Institution Purchases CASI-1500

ITRES (CA, USA) has delivered a custom, high resolution, wide-array CASI-1500 hyperspectral imager to the Carnegie Institution. The Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager provides calibrated, geometrically precise, mapping imagery for up to 288 spectral channels across Visible to Near Infrared (VNIR) wavelengths. This purchase was made possible through funding by the W.M. Keck Foundation and William R. Hearst III.

The Carnegie Airborne Observatory is a new addition to the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. Led by Dr. Gregory Asner, this group will use the CASI-1500 in tandem with an ALTM 3100EA scanning Lidar system produced by Optech Incorporated. The integration of the two systems performed by ITRES combines high-resolution hyperspectral imaging from the CASI-1500 and new 3-D waveform laser remote sensing from the ALTM 3100EA Intelligent Waveform Digitizer. Together, detailed 3-D information on the structure, biochemistry, and physiology of vegetation and ecosystems are provided.