DOE OSTI2017
The foundation of our biosphere and civilization rests on the food and energy produced by plants using sunlight. Yet currently there is no commercially available technology that can measure, continuously and unattended, plant photosynthesis and physiological stresses in natural environments. To fill this commercial technology gap, a Sun-Induced chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) Auto-Measurement Equipment (FAME) that can be applied at scales of leaf, individual plant, or canopy in the field has been developed. The Integrated Measurement and Control System for SIF (IMACSS) is the software used to control the operation of the FAME. IMACSS is a datalogger-operated software which directly controls ALL FUNCTIONS of high-resolution spectrometers for SIF measurements - including the operation temperature and integration time of the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) detectors of spectrometers, the opening and closing of internal shutter, setting and storing of radiance/irradiance calibration coefficients, wavelength calibration coefficients, and serial port communication parameters, setting and clearing buffer holding capacity, and data retrieval. IMACSS also controls FAME's supporting components (e.g. a motor or supplementary sensors for environmental variables such as air temperature, humidity, soil temperature, moisture content, broadband radiation). This software can flexibly control up to two spectrometers and a motor for multi-target measurements in three designs. It also allows a computer to be linked to FAME's datalogger either directly or remotely (via internet) to monitor and control FAME's operation, set parameters for measurements, and download the data.