Angiel EnviroSafe, Inc.

An environmental company

using airborne remote sensing for GIS applications

Fire mapping: The fire mapping shown below from the US Forest Service.

Plant stress:  The following USDA image (and most of the text) is a thermal image of a cotton canopy that was part of a water and nitrogen study in Arizona. Blues and greens represent lower temperatures than yellow and orange. The image, showing plant stress, was acquired with a thermal scanner, similar to the Daedalus shown below.  Most of the blue rectangles (plots) in the image correspond to high water treatments.  However, note that many of the patterns do not correspond to the treatment plots, but represent the natural variability in  soil conditions across the field.

If the field above were irrigated uniformly, some areas of the field would receive more water than the plants need, while other areas would not receive enough.

Therefore, varying the application across the field could reduce water use without significant impact on crop yield. The same would be true of utilizing fertilizers.

Oil spill mapping:

Oil spill mapping, detection and monitoring using thermal IR and UV channels. The UV provides oil spill mapping while the IR is used for oil spill thickness estimates. (See oil spill study below)

Angiel EnviroSafe uses the Daedalus ABS (Airborne Bispectral Imager) system mounted in the camera hole of a Piper Aztec twin engine airplane.  We can bring this unit to almost ANY site for your needs.  This unit has been a proven performer for years.

The ABS has a  wide  86 degree field of view. This unit images over two times more per pass than a  36 degree unit. It collects data in the 8 to 12 micron band (Long Wave IR) and in the 360 to 380 nanometer band (UV).

Oil spill mapping, fire mapping and detection, wetland and thermal mapping are only some of the capabilities of the Deadalus system.  Wetland mapping, plant stress, homeland security, thermal mapping, fire mapping and more are all provided by Angiel EnviroSafe with this imager.

Oil Spill mapping is discussed in the NOAA study below. Fire mapping is shown above. The same imager, Daedalus,  is in use by the US Forest Service in its fire mapping efforts.  Thermal mapping is used for marine mammal counts, plate tectonics, volcanology, plant stress, and much more.

Most importantly, Angiel EnviroSafe is prepared to modify our instrument for any applications. This Daedalus  imager can have a total of 10 bands. As a result of our affiliation with Advanced Photonics we now have the capability of  adding any number of instruments or bands, including lasers, exact temperature probe, UV, visible, and IR bands to the Daedalus imager or mounted and flown separately. This would add to our substantial capabilities of  wetland, plant stress, fire, oil spill and environmental mapping. 

HOMELAND SECURITY

We have been proposing homeland security services to the Federal Government and some States since the early 1990's.

For more information please contact:

Telephone in the U.S.    (786) 897-5562

Email: pierreangiel@aol.com

Angiel EnviroSafe, Inc.

Excerpts from a NOAA oil spill mapping study:

REVIEW OF SOME REMOTE SENSING APPLICATIONS FOR OIL SPILLS

William Lehr

Debra Simecek-Beatty

Office of Response and Restoration

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Seattle, Wash.  USA

ABSTRACT

Remote sensing has been applied to track oil spill trajectories for more than four decades.  Both active and passive sensors, using aircraft and satellite platforms, have been used with varying degrees of success. This paper reviews some of the common bands in the electromagnetic spectrum suitable for following oil spills. An analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of  sensors utilizing those bands is provided, with evaluations of their likely detection capability and capacity to discriminate oil slicks from other surface phenomena. Since interest in using the new generation of satellites for spill detection is increasing, the paper provides a realistic assessment  of the economic and logistic challenges facing widespread use of this remote sensing platform. An example of remote sensing use for a recent spill event off the coast of California is discussed.

INTRODUCTION

The world’s energy needs require the shipment of large quantities of crude oil and refined products by sea. With these shipments, come the small but continuing threat of oil spills and the  subsequent threat to the environment. Both international organizations and national response agencies have developed response plans and specialized cleanup teams to combat these spills.  These teams can respond to small, nearshore spills by relying upon on-scene observations from beach crews, vessel observations, and visual overflights with small aircraft.

However, for large offshore spills, knowledge of the current position of the slick is    needed, both for short-term tactical requirements and for longer-term predictions of the future location of the slicks. This latter operation requires the use of computer-based trajectory models, which themselves must be initialized and calibrated using observations obtained in near real-time.

Logistic considerations may make sole reliance on visual overflights by small aircraft impractical.  Due to the dynamic nature of the motion of oil slicks, old data is not very useful. Both the time scale for slick location and the area coverage are critical components. The coverage should be synoptic and the time scale needs to be of the order of a few hours to provide effective response information. False positives need to be identified and removed. These are difficult requirements. It is the challenge for any remote sensing system to sufficiently meet these requirements so as to provide a practical spill response tool.

Thermal infrared (IR)

These sensors detect the natural thermal radiation from a warm object, which usually  peaks in the infrared range. Oil is discriminated from water by an apparent temperature difference due to a slight difference in emissivity between the two fluids, Oil will appear to the IR sensors somewhat cooler than water of the same temperature. Unfortunately, real temperature differences in the surface water can give a signature similar to the oil slick. Also, thick, dark oil can absorb solar radiation and become warmer than the surrounding water. Thus, one of the challenges using a thermal IR instrument is calibrating it to detect oil, recognizing that an oil slick, depending upon the conditions, may give a warmer or cooler signal than the water background. IR cameras can be mounted on a variety of platforms or even be used as hand-held devices. Attempts have been made to use IR to estimate absolute slick thickness with questionable results. However, there has been some success using IR to determine relative thickness of the slick. This information can be used to direct response teams to the main oil concentrations.

Ultraviolet (UV) and visible spectrum

Oil is much more reflective than water in the UV band and shows as a bright object when illuminated by a suitable source of UV light, such as the sun. Even thin layers of oil will give a  strong signal. There are no strong spectral features in the visual band. Oil is detected by a difference in reflectivity and by the shape of the slick. Many other ocean features, such as cloud shadows, can be, and often are, confused with oil slicks. Both UV and visual are attenuated by rain, clouds or fog. For such conditions, longer wavelengths are required.