MASTER Airborne Imagery of Wildfire Emissions from FIREX-AQ Campaign

Central and western U.S. airborne data from the MASTER instrument during the 2019 FIREX-AQ campaign includes Level 1B calibrated radiance imagery across 50 spectral bands and derived Level 2 products like land surface temperature and emissivity. The dataset covers 21 NASA DC-8 flights from July to September 2019, targeting wildfire and prescribed fire emissions and smoke plume aerosols. It is provided by ORNL_CLOUD and includes flight paths, instrument configuration, and browse images.

Use Cases

• Mapping calibrated radiance across 50 spectral bands (0.460 to 12.879 micrometers) for hyperspectral analysis of smoke plumes.
• Deriving land surface temperature and emissivity in 5 thermal infrared bands (8.58 to 12.13 micrometers) for fire energy release studies.
• Analyzing flight path data and georeferenced imagery at ~20-meter resolution to determine the spatial extent of wildfires.
• Characterizing aerosol types and concentrations within and downwind of fire plumes using multispectral radiance data.

Strengths

• Provides high spatial resolution data at approximately 20 meters per pixel from airborne collection.
• Covers a wide spectral range with 50 calibrated bands from visible to thermal infrared wavelengths.
• Includes derived geophysical products like land surface temperature and emissivity alongside raw radiance.

Limitations

• Conflicting last updated dates exist between platforms (2019-09-03 and 2026-03-13), creating uncertainty about metadata freshness.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and a complete list of data columns are not provided by any source.
• License information is inconsistent, listed as 'other-license-specified' on some platforms and 'None' on others.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Collected via the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

2019-07-22 to 2019-09-03

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:59:07.594141

Geography

Central and western United States