3S: a novel program for field spectroscopy

The graphic user interface software package spectroscopy at subnanometer spectral resolution is presented in this manuscript. The software permits efficient acquisition of field spectroscopy data and is specifically designed to facilitate the operations to compute the reflectance factor of a given object or surface from standard field spectroscopy measurements (so-called field remote sensing): incident and reflected solar radiance measurements. The developed computer code runs with widely diffused commercial low-cost visible/near-infrared Ocean Optics spectrometers. Its development was originally intended for plant studies using field spectroscopy at leaf and canopy level, but 3S can be employed in other applications such as ocean and water quality studies, geological exploration, mineral identification, precision farming and other environmental applications. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.