NASA FIFE Project: Hydrology and Meteorology Field Campaign Data from Kansas

NASA's FIFE project collected detailed airborne and ground measurements to study surface energy and water balances in a Kansas prairie. The data includes 15-minute stream flow records from 1979-1988 and 30-minute rainfall data from 20 gauges in 1987. Aircraft-based eddy-correlation measurements captured fluxes of heat, momentum, carbon dioxide, and supporting meteorological parameters.

Use Cases

• Modeling watershed water budgets based on 15-minute stream flow and rainfall gauge data.
• Analyzing the spatial structure of rainfall events based on data from a network of approximately 30 rain gauges.
• Validating satellite-derived estimates of vegetation and soil conditions using aircraft-measured flux data.
• Studying boundary layer fluxes of sensible heat, latent heat, momentum, and CO2 using low-altitude aircraft measurements.

Strengths

• Stream flow data provides a continuous 15-minute record spanning over nine years, from April 1979 to September 1988.
• Rainfall data was collected from a network of approximately 30 gauges, allowing observation of rain cell structure.
• Aircraft flux measurements were taken at low altitudes (less than 10 meters) using the eddy-correlation method at high frequency (0-5 Hz).

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality, column definitions, and row counts require manual inspection after download.
• Rain gauge data from 1987 suffered losses due to high temperatures, humidity, and logger software problems, with only about 20 gauges typically recoverable at any time.

Provenance

Source

NASA FIFE (First ISLSCP Field Experiment) Project.

Collection Method

Field measurements from USGS stream gauges and rain gauges, combined with airborne measurements from a Twin Otter aircraft.

Time Range

Stream flow: 1979-1988; Rainfall: 1987; Aircraft data: likely 1987-1989 (FIFE campaign period).

Freshness

Data collection ended in 1988; the dataset is a historical archive.

Geography

Kings Creek basin, northwest quadrant of the FIFE study area in Kansas, USA.