LBA-ECO ND-01: Pasture Reflectance and Biomass in Rondonia, Brazil

Rondonia, Brazil, hosts this dataset of spectral reflectance and biophysical measurements from grass pastures on eight cattle ranches. Fieldwork in July and August 2003 collected 484 spectral samples and 68 coincident biophysical samples, covering wavelengths from 350 to 2,500 nm at 1-nm increments. The data includes separated live and senesced biomass for primary grass species Brachiaria brizantha and Brachiaria decumbens.

Use Cases

• Calibrating satellite vegetation indices based on ground-truth spectral reflectance curves.
• Modeling pasture biomass and water content from hyperspectral data.
• Studying the spectral properties of Brachiaria grass species common in tropical pastures.
• Validating remote sensing algorithms for distinguishing live and senesced vegetation.

Strengths

• Provides 484 high-resolution spectral reflectance curves at 1-nm increments.
• Includes 68 directly coincident biophysical samples for validation.
• Covers fourteen 100-meter transects across eight distinct ranch sites, offering spatial replication.

Limitations

• No geographic coordinates are provided to protect landowner privacy, limiting geospatial analysis.
• Data is from a single two-month period in 2003, offering no temporal trend.
• Conflicting last-update dates exist between platforms (2003 vs. 2026), creating uncertainty about metadata currency.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Field spectrometer measurements and destructive vegetation sampling along transects.

Time Range

July-August 2003

Freshness

Field data collected in 2003; metadata last updated conflictingly as 2003-08-03 or 2026-04-10.

Geography

Eight cattle ranches near Porto Velho, Ariquemes, Ouro Preto, Ji-Parana, and Presidente Medici in Rondonia, southwestern Brazilian Amazon.