AVIRIS4Acres-NY successfully captures hyperspectral imagery over Cornell and USDA-ARS research farms
Katie Gold, Cornell University, kg557@cornell.edu
Dana Chadwick, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, dana.chadwick@jpl.nasa.gov
July 28, 2025
Edit 8/3/25: Download the comms brief with acquisition snapshots here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XcEV8ApBkRme0Ig5NGEGKyv4tusw-Sx3/view?usp=drive_link
On Monday July 28th, 2025, AVIRIS-3 successfully captured high resolution (0.5-1.25m) hyperspectral imagery over Cornell University and USDA-ARS research farms in Geneva, Harford, Aurora, Ithaca, and Freeville, NY. In addition, high quality imagery was successfully captured over commercial grapevine, apple, and onion production in the Finger Lakes region.
These flights were funded by the NASA Agriculture program office in support of Drs. Katie Gold & Yu Jiang’s NASA ACRES consortium (#80NSSC23M0034) funded research project on early disease detection. Cornell University is the largest sub-award in the NASA Acres consortium led by Dr. Alyssa Whitcraft at the University of Maryland-College Park.
The AVIRIS team generated a real time data product to quickly share crop insights with the Cornell & local specialty crop production community. The interactive viewer can be used to explore this imagery: https://popo.jpl.nasa.gov/mmgis-aviris/?mission=Acres.
These flights were inspired by conversations held between stakeholders, researchers, and members of NASA leadership at listening sessions held during a three-day “#Space4AgNY” tour of Cornell University research farms, FLX, and Lake Erie grape production in August 2024. This event fostered two-way dialogue between end users, stakeholders, and researchers to improve NASA Earth Science’s research portfolio in specialty crop agriculture and viticulture while fostering a broader conversation about effective research translation into practice.
Drs. Dana Chadwick (NASA JPL), Phil Townsend, and Henry Frye (UW-Madison) collected crop trait data to contribute to the VSWIR PLANTS database. These data will be used to generate downstream foliar trait maps to better understand crop physiology and impacts of disease development and management on grapevine. Cornell Cooperative Extension Finger Lakes Grape Program helped coordinate grower contributions to this dataset.
Drs. Yun Yang, Louis Longchamp, Kerik Cox, Luke Gregory, Ying Sun, Mike Gore, and Sara Emery (Cornell University) also deployed extensive ground validation efforts to leverage these data for ongoing thermal remote sensing, agronomy, apple pathology, and entomology research.
More imagery is slated to be collected over CLEREL and commercial grapevine production in Lake Erie over the next two weeks. If the opportunity presents itself, further captures of the AgriTech farms will be made.