IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2021 - 112

NIMMI C.P. SHARMA, AMIN KABIR, AND JOHN E. BARNES
Camera Lidar Collaboration for
Undergraduate Education
I
n this era of environmental challenges, such as global
climate change and local and regional air pollution,
it is increasingly important that students develop skills
to understand and address interdisciplinary scientific issues
related to atmospheric studies. Involving students
in optical remote sensing research projects is a high-impact
educational strategy that can foster student interest
and persistence in the field. However, in their undergraduate
years, students, especially those at institutions
with limited resources, may have little access to remote
sensing research projects due to limited institutional
budgets for remote sensing research equipment and a
lack of comprehensive, interdisciplinary faculty expertise
in remote sensing at a single institution. A model for
addressing these challenges is to share resources across
different institutions.
In the past, a version of this model which focused on
cross-institutional sharing of resources, including both
expensive research-grade remote sensing lidar equipment
[a Micro-Pulse Lidar (MPL) system] and faculty expertise,
was implemented with the support of a National
Science Foundation (NSF) grant by Central Connecticut
State University (CCSU) in New Britain, Connecticut,
and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in
New Haven, Connecticut. A lidar collaboratory was created
in which a single, highly expensive MPL system was
purchased and housed at CCSU, and a graphics/web/
scientific computing server was purchased and housed
at SCSU. A web-based structure for remote control of
the MPL by students from either institution was developed,
and online data analysis tools, instrument time
scheduling, and data ownership tools were developed.
Faculty expertise in lidar at CCSU was linked with faculty
expertise in remote sensing image analysis at SCSU.
Paired senior project classes were created in which students
from both institutions, in different fields, could
interact on remote sensing research. The model was successful,
and students coauthored multiple papers, but
the model heavily relied on strong, real-time Internet
connectivity for both institutions and on the ability of
each institution to support at least one piece of expensive
equipment.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2021.3064921
Date of current version: 17 June 2021
112
To broaden access to remote sensing research opportunities,
including lidar at institutions where traditional
lidar systems (they typically cost US$100,000 to
US$200,000 or more) are not affordable, and to leverage
scientific collaboration to help reduce the learning curve
for students and faculty in these areas, we undertook a
project that developed a modified model based on locating
identical, very inexpensive remote sensing instrumentation
at different institutions while maintaining a
single data analysis chain. A very low-cost (~US$10,000)
bistatic charge-coupled device camera lidar system (CLidar)
was developed with support from an NSF Major
Research Instrumentation Program Instrument Development
grant. Coupled with cheap, off-the-shelf laser particle
counters and freely available radiosonde and solar
radiometer data, these instruments provide information
for student and faculty studies about aerosols, air pollution,
atmospheric transport, and more.
In collaboration with partners at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), CCSU faculty
and students in the CCSU Lidar Atmospheric Sensing and
Environmental Research group then helped faculty and
students at the University of The Bahamas (UB) build and
set up a CLidar system, shared experimental protocols
for conducting CLidar studies, and provided data analysis
of experimental results for both CCSU and UB data.
This equips faculty at other institutions with expertise in
different areas but who wish to transition to remote sensing
with a quick and inexpensive method for setting up a
lab, minimizing the learning curve for remote sensing research
and linking students at distant institutions through
shared research and publications.
Protocols in the project follow the spirit of the European
Aerosol Lidar Research Network (EARLINET) in
seeking to focus on consistency in instrumentation and
data retrievals to maintain the robustness of data intercomparisons
among different sites. Students trained in
these methods should be well prepared to step into future
remote sensing research.
Undergraduate student and faculty research groups at
CCSU and UB each set up a CLidar system and particle
counters. The costs of these systems were easily within
budgets for primarily undergraduate institutions.
Custom-written software in Interactive Data Language
(IDL) is used for data analysis. IDL is a licensed
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE JUNE 2021
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2021

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