Underground structures can affect their surrounding landscapes in different ways such as soil moisture content, soil composition and vegetation vigor. Vegetation vigor is often observed on the ground as a crop mark; a phenomenon which can be used as a proxy to denote the presence of underground and not visible structures. This paper presents the results obtained from field spectroradiometric campaigns at ‘buried’ underground structures in Cyprus. A SVC-HR1024 field spectroradiometer was used and in-band reflectances were calculated for the Landsat 5 TM medium spatial resolution satellite sensor. A number of vegetation indices such as NDVI, SR and EVI were obtained while a ‘smart index’ was developed aiming for detection of underground military structures by using existing vegetation indices or other in-band algorithms. In this study, test areas were identified, analyzed and modeled. The areas have been analyzed and tested in different scenarios, including: (a) the ‘natural state’ of the underground structure (b) the different type of crop over the underground structure and imported soil (c) the different types of non-natural material over the underground structure. A reference target in the nearby area was selected as a baseline. Controllable meteorological and environmental parameters were acquired and monitored.
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