Alpine ecosystems react quickly to natural and human-induced changes of the alpine region owing to the extreme environmental conditions. Continuing updating of such environmental information is thus of particular significance.

Conventional inventory and monitoring methods fail in the face of the area size and the dynamic of observable environmental changes. Remote sensing methods represent however an ideal alternative for an objective and standardised data acquisition, particularly in case of regional data.

The project “Approximation of surface types in the Alps through CHRIS/Proba polyangular data” wants to contribute towards improving the observation of the alpine environment. The general framework of the experimental CHRIS/Proba mission allows for the evaluation of time series while deriving the reflectance function of surface types. For this purpose the five different photographing angles of CHRIS sensors were examined regarding reflectance intensity and analysed across the seasons considering sun radiation and topography.

The aim of this investigation is the development of a BRDF database for the surface types of the alpine test areas around Oberammergau and the Mangfall Mountains. The planned database should add to the quality of atmospherical/topographical normalisation of remote sensing data.