NASA OTTER Project: Forest Biogeochemistry and Remote Sensing Data

NASA's OTTER Project inventory includes canopy characteristics, spectral reflectance, and meteorological data collected from 1990 to 1991. The dataset likely contains measurements from airborne and field campaigns for Earth Science, such as leaf chemistry, LAI, and atmospheric correction data. It is hosted on AWS Open Data and licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Use Cases

• Validate geometric-optical BRDF models based on spectral reflectance measurements.
• Model forest productivity and carbon cycling based on canopy characteristics like NPP and LAI.
• Perform atmospheric correction for remote sensing data based on sun photometer measurements.
• Analyze species and site variability based on spectral reflectance of foliage and landscape elements.

Strengths

• Includes multiple complementary data types (spectral, meteorological, canopy) for a holistic view.
• Data collected over two years (1990-1991) for temporal analysis.
• Licensed under the permissive CC-BY-4.0 for broad reuse.

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

Collection Method

Airborne and field campaign measurements, including instruments like Spectron SE590 and LICOR.

Time Range

1990 through 1991

Freshness

Data appears to be from a historical campaign (1990-1991); update frequency is not applicable.

Geography

OTTER research sites (specific locations not detailed)