Optical fibers provide a high degree of design freedom and enable the building of imaging spectrometers with optimized compactness. Moreover, the ability to arbitrarily reformat the fibers’ input/output configurations allows the tuning between spatial and spectral sampling to meet specific application requirements. However, currently the system’s spatial sampling is limited by the basic structure design of the fiber bundle, which confined its application in various scenarios. In this thesis, I aim to advance the current fiber-based snapshot imaging spectrometers by developing a compact system with >30000 spatial samplings. Specific aims include the system design, the fabrication of a compact light-guiding fiber bundle by both semi-manual assembling and fully automatic 3D printing, the development of a rapid calibration method, and the system performance assessment for environmental applications. As a result, a fiber-based snapshot imaging spectrometer was developed with a maximum of 31853 (~ 188 x 170) spatial sampling and 61 spectral channels in the 450nm-750nm range. A compact fiber bundle was fabricated with semi-manual assembling to sample the object image at the input and create void spaces between rows at the output for dispersion. 3D printing using custom controlled fused deposition modeling (FDM) is also explored as an alternative fabrication technique, with an air-clad fiber optic faceplate fabricated as a proof of concept. To calibrate the >30000 spatial samples of the system, a rapid spatial calibration method was developed based on Phase-Shifting Interferometry (PSI). Preliminary hyperspectral imaging results of the Rice University campus landscape is presented to demonstrate the system’s spectral imaging capability for distant scenes. The spectrum of different plant species with different health conditions were in accordance with reference instrument measurements. The Houston city traffic was also imaged to demonstrate the system’s snapshot hyperspectral imaging capability on dynamic scenes. Potential applications of the system include terrestrial monitoring land use, air pollution, water resources, and lightning spectroscopy and so on.