Aerolab Laboratory

Welcome to AEROLAB!

AEROLAB is a  mobile installation that can be deployed in different ecosystems to study the relationship between plant-traits and plant ecophysiology with spectral signatures. The core of Aerolab is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) mounting both an hyperspectral sensor (VNIR-SWIR, 400-2500 nm) and a lidar. The UAV generates geocorrected hyperspectral images of multiple ecosystem at centimetric resolution, allowing to study the relationship between ecosystem processes and variations in spectral signature. These can be used to create, train and validate plant-trait retrievals models that can work with remote-sensing data (such as the one derived from multi- and hyper-spectral satellites like Sentinel-2 and PRISMA). Hyperspectral data can also be integrated in Light Use Efficiency (LUE) and Machine-Learning (ML) models to derive Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) and other parameters related to the carbon cycle. Depending on the ecosystem and the required flight altitude the onboard lidar can also contribute to the study of canopy morphology and biomass estimation. 

For more information please contact: federico.carotenuto@ibe.cnr.it