Patent ID: 7593835

Claim:
A method for identifying a material located on the Earth's surface from an image of the material captured by an airborne or satellite sensor, comprising: capturing an image of the material with an airborne or satellite sensor; defining one or more atmospheric conditions associated with the image under which radiation transport parameters, including atmospheric transmittance and radiance, will be determined; providing atomic and molecular transition data for a given spectral range and the atmospheric conditions; selecting a spectral region to be considered; dividing the spectral region into a number of spectral bins that determine the spectral resolution, each bin having a width of less than 1.0 cm −1 ; calculating atomic and molecular species line center absorption from at least the equivalent width of the atomic and molecular transitions centered within each spectral bin; calculating line tail absorption within each spectral bin from atomic and molecular transitions not centered within the bin; determining atomic and molecular species spectral transmittances for each spectral bin, the spectral transmittance having a value which is a function of at least the calculated line center absorptions and the calculated line tail absorptions; and applying the determined spectral transmittances to the image to identify the material.