Environmental monitoring: civilian applications of remote sensing

This report documents the results of a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program to explore how best to utilize Sandia`s defense-related sensing expertise to meet the Department of Energy`s (DOE) ever-growing needs for environmental monitoring. In particular, we focused on two pressing DOE environmental needs: (1) reducing the uncertainties in global warming predictions, and (2) characterizing atmospheric effluents from a variety of sources. During the course of the study we formulated a concept for using unmanned aerospace vehicles (UAVs) for making key 0798 climate measurements; designed a highly accurate, compact, cloud radiometer to be flown on those UAVs; and established the feasibility of differential absorption Lidar (DIAL) to measure atmospheric effluents from waste sites, manufacturing processes, and potential treaty violations. These concepts have had major impact since first being formulated in this ,study. The DOE has adopted, and DoD`s Strategic Environmental Research Program has funded, much of the UAV work. And the ultraviolet DIAL techniques have already fed into a major DOE non- proliferation program