NASA AirMOSS Project: P-Band Radar and In Situ Soil Measurements

Airborne P-band radar backscatter data and in situ soil measurements were collected at 10 study sites across North America from 2012 to 2015. The dataset includes Level 1 polarimetric radar products and field measurements of soil temperature, moisture, conductivity, and tree dimensions. These data were gathered by NASA's AirMOSS project to validate root-zone soil moisture estimates and model carbon fluxes.

Use Cases

• Retrieving root-zone soil moisture based on P-band radar backscatter coefficients.
• Validating carbon flux model estimates based on in situ soil and tree measurements.
• Analyzing seasonal and inter-annual soil moisture variability across North American ecosystems.
• Calibrating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data using ground-truth measurements from forest sites.

Strengths

• Data collection spanned at least 10 distinct study sites across North America.
• Measurements were taken biannually over a multi-year period from 2012 to 2015.
• Includes both airborne radar data and in situ ground measurements for validation.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Subsurface (AirMOSS) project.

Collection Method

Collected via a P-band synthetic aperture radar flown on a NASA Gulfstream-III aircraft and through in situ field measurements.

Time Range

2012 to 2015, with specific in situ data from October 2012 and July-August 2013.

Freshness

null

Geography

10 study sites across North America, including locations in Massachusetts (USA), Saskatchewan (Canada), Jalisco (Mexico), and North Carolina (USA).