Abstract
The Seventh Army training Command and the 100th Area Support Group provide the only maneuver and live-fire training areas for the U.S. Army's combat forces in Europe. The U.S. Army's mission includes the protection of forests, range lands, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources entrusted to its care. Therefore, training areas are maintained by professional land and environmental managers to reduce the impact of the training on the environment. In order to keep a functional ecosystem and endangered species within the training area intensive environmental monitoring and data acquisition are necessary. Water and erosion control programs as well as Land Condition Monitoring Programs and other evaluations are necessary tools to provide a basis for the decisions concerning training intensity and land rehabilitation requirements. These tools need an input of data about topography, vegetation, soil and other parameters. To collect many of the data for these tasks the environmental managers use innovative remote sensing systems. Besides aerial photography and satellite imagery airborne sensors such as the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC-A), Laserscanner (LIDAR), interferometric synthetic radar, multispectral scanners (Daedalus, HRSC-A) and hyperspectral scanners (HyMap) are being used. A recent project is presented where hyperspectral reflectance data were used to determine mineral content in soils and differentiate surface cover types using a new unmixing approach. The project showed the high potential of hyperspectral imagery for examination of soils and surface cover types. The results will enable more precise investigations and modeling tasks in the environmental management context.
