| Abstract | A new Local Environmental Applications Program (LEAP) has been initiated at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. The use of high spatial resolution optical remote sensing data is essential to the
development of local environmental applications which refer to effects occurring on small spatial scales. The aerial extent of such effects however, may be quite large. The term local therefore refers to the scale at which a given environmental
effect occurs and not to small surface areas. Examples of such situations and current case studies will be presented. The treatment of high spatial resolution optical images over large surfaces for the extraction of specific biophysical information
requires reduction of the image data to a physically meaningful parameter, the surface reflectance. Information extraction from the surface reflectance images is performed with what is referred to as a landscape model. In this context, such a model
incorporates the transformation of the remote sensing data into surface reflectance, spectro-spatial transformations for the derivation of valued ecosystem components (VEC) and algorithms for the scaling of such transformations as a function of the
spatial scale of the environmental parameters involved. These transformations are necessarily based on the behaviour of the VEC surface reflectance as a function of the usual optical remote sensing parameters (e.g. geometry, illumination, atmospheric
scattering) as well as on environmental parameters such as local meteorology, wildlife habitat, annual hydrological cycles, etc. This paper presents the physical principles for the construction of such landscape models and a preliminary case study of
an environmental baseline of valued ecosystem components in the area around a proposed large scale mining development on Voisey's Bay, Labrador. The various problems associated with baselining such a remote site will be addressed. |