NASA 2009_AK_UAF Project: Operation IceBridge Glacier Lidar and Flight Reports

NASA Operation IceBridge funded aircraft campaigns collected surface profiles and scanning laser altimetry data points of Alaskan glaciers and parts of Antarctica using the University of Alaska Fairbanks Glacier Lidar system. Flight reports from Greenland, Arctic, Antarctic, and Alaska missions contain details on region, mission, aircraft, and sensors. The data is hosted on AWS and requires an Earthdata Login account for access.

Use Cases

• Modeling glacier surface elevation change based on laser altimetry profiles.
• Analyzing aircraft survey campaign logistics and sensor deployment based on flight report metadata.
• Correlating flight line paths with geophysical measurements using the referenced IceBridge L1B Thinned Flight Lines dataset.

Strengths

• Data originates from NASA's Operation IceBridge, a major airborne survey program.
• Includes complementary flight report metadata detailing mission parameters and sensor information.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Operation IceBridge, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Glacier Lidar system.

Collection Method

Airborne survey campaigns using lidar systems.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

Alaska Glaciers, parts of East and West Antarctica, Greenland, Arctic regions.