### "The Infra-whatnow?" The **Infragram** is a simple, affordable infrared camera platform -- developed collaboratively, by the Public Lab community -- for measuring plant health and geeking out on gardening. It's for farmers, gardeners, -- and DIY scientists! ![RoscoVis-201335838.jpg](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/000/280/medium/RoscoVis-201335838.jpg) It was originally developed to assess damage to wetlands in the wake of the BP oil spill; but it's also a simple, easy-to-modify, open-source hardware and software tool that home gardeners, hikers, makers, farmers, amateur scientists, teachers, artists -- anyone who's curious about plant physiology and health! ### What is it good for? - Take pictures to examine plant health in backyard gardens, farms, parks, and nearby wetlands - Monitor your household plants - Teach students about plant growth and photosynthesis - Create exciting science fair projects - Generate verifiable, open environmental data - Check progress of environmental restoration projects - Document unhealthy areas of your local ecology Vineyards, large farms, and NASA all use near-infrared photography for assessment, usually by mounting expensive sensors on airplanes and satellites. **Infragram** brings this technology to average citizens, enabling them to monitor their environment through quantifiable, citizen-generated data. Just as photography was instrumental to the rise of credible print journalism, DIY data collection technologies like **Infragram** democratize and improve reporting about environmental impacts. ### How does it work? (Quick Science) The study of Earth's environment from space got its start in 1972 when the first Landsat satellite was launched. The multispectral scanner it carried, like the scanners on all subsequent Landsat satellites, recorded images with both visible and near infrared light. Remote sensing scientists quickly learned that by combining visible and infrared data, they could reveal critical information about the health of vegetation. For example, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) highlights the difference between the red and infrared wavelengths that are reflected from vegetation. Because red light is used by plants for photosynthesis but infrared light is not, NDVI allows scientists to estimate the amount of healthy foliage in every satellite image. Thousands of scientists, including landscape ecologists, global change biologists, and habitat specialists have relied on these valuable satellite-based NDVI images for decades. The goal of the Infragram project is to bring the power of NDVI and other infrared vegetation images back to earth where everyone can now take close-up images of plants or landscapes and instantly learn about their health and vigor. ![PetVISNDVIcomp.jpg](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/000/341/medium/PetVISNDVIcomp.jpg)

Figure above: Normal color photo (top) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) image. NDVI image was derived from two color channels in a single photo taken with a camera modified with a special infrared filter. Note that tree trunks, brown grass, and rocks have very low NDVI values because they are not photosynthetic. Healthy plants typically have NDVI values between 0.1 and 0.9.

![IMG_0511-split.png](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/000/279/medium/IMG_0511-split.png) ![infrared-plant-2.png](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/000/277/medium/infrared-plant-2.png) - NDVI - Image ![infrared-combination.png](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/000/278/medium/infrared-combination.png) ### How do we do it? (prototypes, links) ![RoscoVis-201335838.jpg](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/000/280/medium/RoscoVis-201335838.jpg)