NASA AVUELO Project: AVIRIS-3 Airborne Hyperspectral Reflectance for Tropical Ecosystems

Level 2A orthocorrected surface reflectance and uncertainty data from the AVIRIS-3 airborne imaging spectrometer. The dataset was acquired for the AVUELO project in February 2025 over terrestrial and marine sites in Panama and Costa Rica. NASA generated this provisional data product to advance the validation of spaceborne hyperspectral data for tropical ecosystems.

Use Cases

• Calibrating spaceborne hyperspectral instruments based on contemporaneous airborne reflectance measurements.
• Validating surface reflectance algorithms for tropical ecosystems using the provided uncertainty estimates.
• Developing machine learning models for land cover classification based on high-resolution spectral data from 390-2500 nm.
• Studying spectral signatures of tropical marine and terrestrial features using orthocorrected, georeferenced imagery.

Strengths

• Data covers the Visible to Shortwave Infrared (VSWIR) spectral range from 390-2500 nm at ~7.4-nm intervals.
• Imagery has a high spatial resolution, with ground sampling distances from 12 meters down to sub-meter depending on altitude.
• Includes both orthocorrected surface reflectance and orthocorrected reflectance uncertainty estimates for each flight scene.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The calibration algorithm is described as provisional, with a version 2 calibration planned for future release.

Provenance

Source

NASA

Collection Method

Airborne data collected by the AVIRIS-3 spectrometer deployed on a King Air aircraft, processed with an optimal estimation algorithm.

Time Range

February 2025

Freshness

Data was acquired in February 2025, but the last update date for the dataset listing is unknown.

Geography

Panama and Costa Rica