The 2nd Surface Reflectance Intercomparison Exercise for Vegetation (SRIX4Veg) workshop was held at ESA Esrin on the 23rd and 24th of November 2023. The workshop was organised by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and ESA, and involved participants from around the world with two main aims: to disseminate the results of the first SRIX4Veg round-robin exercise that was attended by seven teams in Spain last summer, and to put forward an outline of a protocol for the use of UAV mounted hyperspectral instruments for the validation of satellite surface reflectance products.
The conference was attended in person by representatives from the European Space Agency, CSIRO, the University of Wageningen, National Research Canada, GEO-K, the German Space Agency (DLR) and GFZ. Additionally, over 50 participants attended online.
The first day of the workshop focused on recapping the need for an intercomparison exercise to assess differences which would arise due to discrete sampling protocols implemented by each team. Niall Origo presented the scientific results from the intercomparison exercise which highlighted that the differences between team results were reduced if a standard protocol was implemented.
The use of hyperspectral UAV’s is a developing area of research in satellite validation and helps to overcome issues which affect traditional validation techniques which rely on handheld measurements. This include sampling a larger area within the overpass time, and enabling measurements in environments such as crops and forests which are previously inaccessible using handheld instruments.
