Colour InfraRed (CIR) imagery for most of England and Wales collected between 2006 and 2010 at 50cm resolution by Bluesky, and then acquired by the Landmap project. The data were collected using digital cameras mounted underneath planes. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded Landmap service which ran from 2001 to July 2014 collected and hosted Earth Observation satellite data for the majority of the UK, part of which was CIR data. After removal of JISC funding in 2013, the Landmap service is no longer operational, with the data now held at the NEODC. The data are split into 100x100km regions that correspond to Ordnance Survey grid reference squares, and are available in GeoTiff format. Some regions are also available in ecw (Enhanced Compression Wavelet) format. Colour InfraRed imagery consists of imagery in three bands – Near InfraRed (NIR), red and green. CIR can be used study the health and variation of vegetation coverage as NIR rays are reflected at the bottom of leaves rather than the top, as with green. To aid with this, images were captured at times when plants were expected to be in full leaf. The invisible near infrared light of CIR can be "seen" by shifting it and the primary colours over so that near infrared wavelengths become visible as red while red wavelengths appear as green and green as blue. Blue wavelengths are shifted out of the visible portion of the spectrum and so they appear as black. On CIR imagery vegetation appears red while water generally appears black with artificial structures like buildings and roads showing as a light blue-green.

When using these data please also include the following copyright statement: © GeoPerspectives supplied by Bluesky yyyy