Abstract A fiber sensor array for subsurface CO 2 concentration measurements was developed for monitoring geologic carbon sequestration sites. The fiber sensor array uses a single temperature-tunable distributed feedback (DFB) laser operating with a nominal wavelength of 2.004 μm. Light from this DFB laser is directed to one of the four probes via an inline 1 × 4 fiber optic switch. Each of the four probes is buried and allows the subsurface CO 2 to enter the probe through Millipore filters that allow the soil gas to enter the probe but keeps out the soil and water. Light from the DFB laser interacts with the CO 2 before it is directed back through the inline fiber optic switch. The DFB laser is tuned across two CO 2 absorption features, where a transmission measurement is made allowing the CO 2 concentration to be retrieved. The fiber optic switch then directs the light to the next probe where this process is repeated, allowing subsurface CO 2 concentration measurements at each of the probes to be made as a function of time. The fiber sensor array was deployed for 58 days beginning from June 19, 2012 at the Zero Emission Research Technology field site, where subsurface CO 2 concentrations were monitored. Background measurements indicate that the fiber sensor array can monitor background levels as low as 1000 parts per million (ppm). A 34-day subsurface release of 0.15 tones CO 2 / day began on July 10, 2012. The elevated subsurface CO 2 concentration was easily detected by each of the four probes with values ranging over 60,000 ppm, a factor of greater than 6 higher than background measurements.

A laser transmitter has been developed and incorporated into a micro-pulse differential absorption lidar (DIAL) for water vapor profiling in the lower troposphere as an important step towards long-term autonomous field operation. The laser transmitter utilizes two distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) diode lasers to injection seed a pulsed tapered semiconductor optical amplifier (TSOA), and is capable of producing up to 10 mJ of pulse energy with a 1 ms pulse duration and a 10 kHz pulse repetition frequency. The on-line wavelength of the laser transmitter can operate anywhere along the water vapor absorption feature centered at 828.187 nm (in vacuum) depending on the prevailing atmospheric conditions, while the off-line wavelength operates at 828.287 nm. This laser transmitter has been incorporated into a DIAL instrument utilizing a 35.6 cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and fiber coupled avalanche photodiode (APD) operating in the photon counting mode. The performance of the DIAL instrument was demonstrated over a ten-day observation period. During this observation period, data from radiosondes were used to retrieve water vapor number density profiles for comparisons with the number density profiles retrieved from the DIAL data.

Carbon sequestration has the potential to reduce environmental impacts of power generation using fossil fuels. Many technological challenges exist for implementing carbon sequestration. In this presentation, detection techniques for carbon sequestration site monitoring are presented.

A scanning differential absorption lidar (DIAL) instrument for identification of carbon dioxide leaks at carbon sequestration sites has been developed and initial data has been collected at Montana State University. The laser transmitter uses two tunable discrete mode laser diodes operating in the continuous-wave mode with one locked to the online absorption wavelength and the other operating at the offline wavelength. Two in-line fiber optic switches are used to switch between online and offline operation. After the fiber optic switch, an acousto-optic modulator is used to generate a pulse train used to injection seed an erbium-doped fiber amplifier to produce eye-safe laser pulses with maximum pulse energies of 66 μJ, a pulse repetition frequency of 15 kHz, and an operating wavelength of 1.571 μm. The DIAL receiver uses a 28 cm diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope to collect that backscattered light, which is then monitored using a photomultiplier tube module operating in the photon counting mode. The DIAL has measured carbon dioxide profiles from 1 to 2.5 km with 60 min temporal averaging. Comparisons of DIAL measurements with a Licor LI-820 gas analyzer point sensor have been made.

The high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) instrument described in this paper utilizes the fundamental and second-harmonic output from an injection seeded Nd:YAG laser as the laser transmitter. The light scattered in the atmosphere is collected using a commercial Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with the optical receiver train first splitting the fundamental and second-harmonic return signal with the fundament light monitored using an avalanche photodiode. The second-harmonic return signal is mode matched into a tunable confocal Fabry-Perot (CFP) interferometer with a free spectral range of 7.5 GHz and a finesse of 50.7 (312) at 532 nm (1064 nm) placed in the optical receiver for spectrally filtering the molecular and aerosol return signals. The light transmitted through the CFP is used to monitor the aerosol return signal while the light reflected from the CFP is used to monitor the molecular return signal. Data collected with the HSRL are presented and inversion results are compared to a co-located solar radiometer, demonstrating the successful operation of the instrument. The CFP-based filtering technique successfully employed by this HSRL instrument is easily portable to other arbitrary wavelengths, thus allowing for the future development of multiwavelength HSRL instruments.

An all diode-laser-based micropulse differential absorption lidar (DIAL) laser transmitter for tropospheric water vapor and aerosol profiling is presented. The micropulse DIAL (MPD) transmitter utilizes two continuous wave (cw) external cavity diode lasers (ECDL) to seed an actively pulsed, overdriven tapered semiconductor optical amplifier (TSOA). The MPD laser produces up to 7 watts of peak power over a 1 µs pulse duration (7 µJ) and a 10 kHz pulse repetition frequency. Spectral switching between the online and offline seed lasers is achieved on a 1Hz basis using a fiber optic switch to allow for more accurate sampling of the atmospheric volume between the online and offline laser shots. The high laser spectral purity of greater than 0.9996 coupled with the broad tunability of the laser transmitter will allow for accurate measurements of tropospheric water vapor in a wide range of geographic locations under varying atmospheric conditions. This paper describes the design and performance characteristics of a third generation MPD laser transmitter with enhanced laser performance over the previous generation DIAL system.

Atmospheric aerosol optical properties were observed from 21 to 27 September 2009 over Bozeman, Montana, during a transitional period in which background polluted rural continental aerosols and well-aged biomass-burning aerosols were the dominant aerosol types of extremely fresh biomass-burning aerosols resulting from forest fires burning in the northwestern United States and Canada. Aerosol optical properties and relative humidity profiles were retrieved using an eye-safe micropulse water vapor differential absorption lidar (DIAL) (MP-DIAL), a single-channel backscatter lidar, a CIMEL solar radiometer as part of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET), a ground-based integrating nephelometer, and aerosol products from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua. Aerosol optical depths (AODs) measured during the case study ranged between 0.03 and 0.17 (0.015 and 0.075) at 532 nm (830 nm) as episodic combinations of fresh and aged biomass-burning aerosols dominated the optical depth of the pristinely clean background air. Here, a pristinely clean background refers to very low AOD conditions, not that the aerosol scattering and absorption properties are necessarily representative of a clean aerosol type. Diurnal variability in the aerosol extinction to backscatter ratio (S-a) of the background atmosphere derived from the two lidars, which ranged between 55 and 95 sr (50 and 90 sr) at 532 nm (830 nm), showed good agreement with retrievals from AERONET sun and sky measurements over the same time period but were consistently higher than some aerosol models had predicted. S-a measured during the episodic smoke events ranged on average from 60 to 80 sr (50 to 70 sr) at 532 nm (830 nm) while the very fresh biomass-burning aerosols were shown to exhibit significantly lower S-a ranging between 20 and 40 sr. The shortwave direct radiative forcing that was due to the intrusion of biomass-burning aerosols was calculated to be on average -10 W/m(2) and was shown to compare favorably with regional-scale forcing calculations using MODIS-Terra and AERONET data in an effort to assess the accuracy of estimating the regional-scale aerosol direct radiative forcing effect using aerosol optical properties measured from a single rural site such as Bozeman, Montana.

Abstract A second-generation diode-laser-based master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configured micropulse differential absorption lidar (DIAL) instrument for profiling of lower-tropospheric water vapor is presented. The DIAL transmitter is based on a continuous wave (cw) external cavity diode laser (ECDL) master oscillator that is used to injection seed two cascaded tapered semiconductor optical power amplifiers, which deliver up to 2-μJ pulse energies over a 1-μs pulse duration at 830 nm with an average power of ∼40 mW at a pulse repetition frequency of 20 kHz. The DIAL receiver utilizes a commercial 28-cm-diameter Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope, a 250-pm narrowband optical filter, and a fiber-coupled single-photon-counting Avalanche photodiode (APD) detector, yielding a far-field full-angle field of view of 170 μrad. A detailed description of the second-generation Montana State University (MSU) DIAL instrument is presented. Water vapor number density profiles and time–height cross sections collected w...

A biological detection scheme based on the natural foraging behavior of conditioned honeybees for detecting chemical vapor plumes associated with unexploded ordnance devices utilizes a scanning lidar instrument to provide spatial mapping of honeybee densities. The scanning light detection and ranging (lidar) instrument uses a frequency doubled Nd:YAG microchip laser to send out a series of pulses at a pulse repetition rate of 6.853 kHz. The scattered light is monitored to produce a discrete time series for each range. This discrete time series is then processed using an efficient algorithm that is able to isolate and identify the return signal from a honeybee in a cluttered environment, producing spatially mapped honeybee densities. Two field experiments were performed with the scanning lidar instrument that demonstrate good correlation between the honeybee density maps and the target locations.

The performance of two laser-based instruments for carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring was tested during a controlled release experiment performed at the zero emissions research and technology (ZERT) controlled release facility. The first instrument measures path-integrated CO2 concentrations above ground in two orthogonal directions using a continuous-wave, temperature-tunable, distributed feedback (DFB) diode laser with a center wavelength of 2.003μm. The second instrument also uses a continuous-wave temperature-tunable DFB laser to deliver light via fiber optics to three underground sensors. Two underground sensors utilize absorption cells of 0.3 and 1m lengths that are buried 1m apart approximate 0.75m above the underground release pipe. The third underground sensor utilizes a photonic bandgap (PBG) fiber as part of a fiber optic sensor. A 0.3tCO2/day controlled release was conducted from July 9 to August 7, 2008. The two instruments were able to distinguish the elevated CO2 concentration associated with the CO2 injection.

Atmospheric aerosols play a large role in the Earth's radiation budget, but their specific radiative forcing effects vary wildly depending upon species, altitude and geographic location. A suite of instruments has been developed and deployed at Montana State University in Bozeman for the purpose of conducting altitude-resolved atmospheric aerosol studies.

This work describes the design and testing of a highly-tunable differential absorption lidar (DIAL) instrument utilizing an all-semiconductor transmitter. This new DIAL instrument transmitter has a highly-tunable external cavity diode laser (ECDL) as a seed laser source for two cascaded commercial tapered amplifiers. The transmitter has the capability of tuning over a range of ~ 17 nm centered at about 832 nm to selectively probe several water vapor absorption lines. This capability has been requested in other recent DIAL experiments for wavelengths near 830 nm. The transmitter produces pulse energies of approximately 0.25 μJ at a repetition rate of 20 kHz. The linewidth is exceptionally narrow at <0.3 MHz, with frequency stability that has been shown to be +/- 88 MHz and spectral purity of 0.995. Tests of the DIAL instrument to prove the validity of its measurements were undertaken. Preliminary water vapor profiles, taken in Bozeman, Montana, agree to within 5-60% with profiles derived from co-located radiosondes 800 meters above ground altitude. Below 800 meters, the measurements are biased low due to a number of systematic issues that are discussed. The long averaging times required by low-power systems have been shown to lead to biases in data, and indeed, our results showed strong disagreements on nights when the atmosphere was changing rapidly, such as on windy nights or when a storm system was entering the area. Improvements to the system to correct the major systematic biases are described.

Coordinated observational data of atmospheric aerosols were collected over a 24-h period between 2300 mountain daylight time (MDT) on 27 August 2009 and 2300 MDT on 28 August 2009 at Bozeman, Montana (45.66 degrees N, 111.04 degrees W, elevation 1530 m) using a collocated two-color lidar, a diode-laser-based water vapor differential absorption lidar (DIAL), a solar radiometer, and a ground-based nephelometer. The optical properties and spatial distribution of the atmospheric aerosols were inferred from the observational data collected using the collocated instruments as part of a closure experiment under dry conditions with a relative humidity below 60%. The aerosol lidar ratio and aerosol optical depth retrieved at 532 and 1064 nm using the two-color lidar and solar radiometer agreed with one another to within their individual uncertainties while the scattering component of the aerosol extinction measured using the nephelometer matched the scattering component of the aerosol extinction retrieved using the 532-nm channel of the two-color lidar and the single-scatter albedo retrieved using the solar radiometer. Using existing aerosol models developed with Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) data, a thin aerosol layer observed over Bozeman was most likely identified as smoke from forest fires burning in California; Washington; British Columbia, Canada; and northwestern Montana. The intrusion of the thin aerosol layer caused a change in the atmospheric radiative forcing by a factor of 1.8 +/- 0.5 due to the aerosol direct effect.

A hyperspectral imaging system was used to monitor vegetation during a subsurface controlled release of carbon dioxide (CO2). From August 3 to 10, 2007, 0.3tons CO2/day were released through a 70m horizontal pipe located at a nominal depth of 1.8m below the surface. Hyperspectral images of alfalfa plants were collected during the controlled release and used along with classification tree analysis to study changes in the reflectance spectra as a function of perpendicular distance from the horizontal pipe. Changes in the reflectance spectra near the red edge (650–750nm) were observed over the course of the controlled release experiment for plants within a perpendicular distance of 1m of the release pipe. These results indicate monitoring vegetation over a carbon sequestration site has the potential to allow monitoring of the integrity of the CO2 storage.

A compact, widely tunable semiconductor based water vapor differential absorption lidar (DIAL) has been built and tested at Montana State University (MSU). The laser transmitter uses a tunable external cavity diode laser (ECDL) with a center wavelength of 830 nm to injection seed two cascaded tapered semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), producing 1.5 micro joule pulses at a pulse repetition rate and pulse width duration of 20 kHz and 1000 ns respectively, allowing for water vapor number density retrievals up to approximately 4 km. Water vapor number density profiles collected with the MSU water vapor DIAL will be compared with co-located radiosonde measurements, demonstrating the instruments ability to measure daytime and nighttime water vapor profiles in the lower troposphere.