WK 18 - Exploring Changes in Vulnerable Ecosystems with NASA Airborne Data

Session Description: While NASA is well-known for Earth observations from satellite missions, NASA’s Airborne Science Program furthers understanding of the Earth system and is a vital part of key ecosystem studies. These studies often focus on ecological changes, such as the Arctic and boreal regions or across river deltas and their associated wetlands.

This workshop will focus on airborne data available through the NASA-funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC), the primary repository for NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology program. The ORNL DAAC provides access to airborne data collected from key ecological campaigns such as Delta-X, studying river deltas and their wetlands in the Gulf Coast Atchafalaya and Terrebonne Basins, and the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), studying the boreal regions of western Canada and Alaska. From these and other airborne studies, calibrated instrument data as well as derived data products are available. Delta-X and ABoVE have airborne components using radar and image spectrometer instruments, including UAVSAR, AVIRIS-NG, and AirSWOT.

This workshop will provide an overview of these instruments and the data they provide along with Jupyter Notebook tutorials for data access and analysis. Ecological applications include geophysical observations such as cumulative changes in water levels and soil moisture profiles from UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), imaging spectrometer radiance and reflectance data from AVIRIS-NG (Airborne Visible-Infrared Spectrometer Next Generation) having thousands of flight lines available across the United States and Canada, and continuous surface elevation data at very fine resolutions for both land and water bodies from AirSWOT.