With 2026 now in stride, the facility has conducted a review of some of the highlights of last year.
The facility was extensively involved with, and integral in the leadership of, various groups focusing on fundamental calibration and validation methodologies for field spectroscopy.
These collaboration efforts have helped maintain, and expand, the facility’s role in remaining at the forefront of international spectroscopy efforts, a key goal highlighted in the facility’s commissioning.
The facility – in collaboration with Rothamsted Research as an academic partner and Analytik Ltd as an industrial partner – founded the UK Headwall Imager Working Group, which brings together all UK users of UAV hyperspectral imaging systems developed by Headwall Photonics. The group, which encompasses 30 individual members from 18 institutions, aims to ensure best practice in both the calibration of UAV imagers and in their application to field studies. A workshop was organized and led by the facility in 03-2025 which brought together four research groups – the National Physics Laboratory, Rothamsted Research, RAL Space, and University College London – to conduct a laboratory calibration and characterization of UAV hyperspectral imagers. Plans are in place to replicate this experiment in 2026, followed by testing of field data acquisition methodologies.
Our Operations Team has joined projects across the globe, including the European Cooperation in Science and Technology funded PANGEOS (Pan-European Network of Green Deal Agriculture and Forestry Earth Observation Science - https://pangeos.eu/) exercise. This aims to standardize the acquisition of ground based and UAV measurements in field spectroscopy as well as to develop standard workflows for the integration of field spectroscopy data with wider Earth Observation measurements. The facility was involved in a field trial of ground-based field spectroscopy measurements in 06-2025, with concurrent development of data workflow packages throughout the rest of the year. Additionally, the Operations Team was involved in the Rochester Institute of Technology led RIT Open Community eXperiment 2025 (ROCX25)
In 03-2025, the facility was awarded an equipment fund from NERC SF LRI. The funding helped the facility to acquire:
- A Spectral Evolution PSR+ 3500 with portable reflectance-transmission sphere
- An Analytical Spectral Devices ASD Field of View Synchronized High Spectral Resolution System, incorporating two ASD FieldSpec 4 High Resolution spectrometers
- A Headwall Nano HP VNIR Airborne Turnkey Package with LiDAR attachment and integrated DJI M350 UAV
- A DJI L2 LiDAR with DJ M350 UAV
The facility continues to provide an annual workshop with NEODAAS. This year, the workshop was held in 2025-04 at Leicester. Total attendance at this year’s workshop was 28 participants, with a total of 60 applications.
The facility received a total of 34 loan applications in 2025, with all applications receiving support. In addition, 10 publications citing NERC FSF support were recorded.
Finally, the facility reached a milestone at the end of 2025 – our 1,000th loan application received and commissioned. Winnie Owoko, from King’s College London and supervised by Dr Emma Tebbs, loaned one of our ASD FieldSpec 4 instruments to measure water leaving reflectance at lakes within Kenya.
To mark the occasion, we invited Winnie as well as past and present staff members to our new facility building in Edinburgh for a small celebration. Our thanks goes not just to NERC and NCEO for their financial and operational support for the facility, but to all of the 1,000 loan users we’ve provided for – we hope your remote sensing research was empowered with the instrumentation provided by the facility.
