Surface reflectance validation for multi- and hyperspectral air- and spaceborne sensors using in-situ data from the CARMA campaign in Puch, Germany

Abstract

Between May and September 2025, an extensive agricultural campaign called CARMA, organised by LMU, GFZ and DLR and partially funded by ESA, was conducted in Puch, Germany, with the aim of preparing for the next generation of Copernicus satellites including ROSE-L, a SAR instrument, and CHIME, a spaceborne imaging spectrometer. Through the campaign, in-situ surveys, airborne observations and spaceborne acquisitions were organised in the region to create a comprehensive dataset to address agricultural and environmental topics at different spatial and spectral resolutions. The scale of the campaign represents a unique opportunity to develop and validate techniques in the vegetation, soil and atmospheric domains, in particular for the derivation and estimation of biophysical properties such as fractional vegetation cover and above-ground biomass as well as soil properties like soil organic carbon and bulk density. In this work, we focus on the surface reflectance validation of air- and spaceborne images acquired over Puch using ground-based measurements from an SVC spectrometer.