MASTER Airborne Imagery for Western Ecosystem Diversity

Fifty spectral bands of calibrated radiance data were captured by the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument during five NASA ER-2 flights over California and Nevada from September 2-9, 2022. This dataset provides Level 1B georeferenced imagery at ~50-meter resolution and derived Level 2 products including land surface temperature and emissivity. Managed by ORNL_CLOUD, the data supports the Western Diversity Time Series campaign's goal of benchmarking ecosystems and monitoring natural disasters.

Use Cases

• Classifying vegetation type and health using 50 bands of multispectral radiance data.
• Modeling land surface temperature dynamics from the derived L2 thermal infrared product.
• Calibrating satellite-based sensors by comparing airborne MASTER radiance measurements.
• Assessing pre- and post-disaster landscape conditions for wildfires and droughts in California.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of surface emissivity across different land covers using the 5-band L2 product.

Strengths

• Data includes 50 calibrated spectral bands covering a wide wavelength range from 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers.
• Provides both raw radiance (L1B) and derived geophysical products like land surface temperature and emissivity (L2).
• Covers a specific, recent time-series campaign with five flights over a one-week period in September 2022.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution is approximately 50 meters, which may be coarse for some fine-scale ecological studies.
• Conflicting last updated dates exist between sources (2026-03 13 vs. 2022-09-09), creating uncertainty about metadata maintenance.
• Exact dataset size, row count, and total file volume are not specified in any provided source.

Provenance

Source

NASA MASTER instrument aboard an ER-2 aircraft, part of the Western Diversity Time Series (WDTS) campaign.

Collection Method

Airborne remote sensing data collection, processed to Level 1B (calibrated radiance) and Level 2 (emissivity, temperature) products.

Time Range

2022-09-02 to 2022-09-09

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:57:11.374649

Geography

California and Nevada, U.S.