NASA PROVE Project: Airborne and Field Campaigns for Earth Science Validation
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Description
NASA's Prototype Validation Exercise (PROVE) at the Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico, on May 20-30, 1997, collected plot-level ecological measurements. The campaign used four instruments—a Dycam Agricultural Digital Camera, a LI-COR LAI-2000 plant canopy analyzer, a Decagon sunfleck ceptometer, and a laser altimeter—to calculate plant area index, leaf area index, and fractional cover. A companion study used low-flying aircraft with multiband radiometers to acquire top-of-canopy reflectance data at multiple viewing angles for MODIS land product validation.
Use Cases
Validate Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land products based on aircraft-based radiometric data.
Compare instrument-derived estimates of plant area index and fractional cover based on data from four field instruments.
Analyze spatial variations in surface albedo under different solar conditions based on transect measurements.
Study the relationship between ground cover and broadband albedo in a semi-arid biome.
Strengths
Multi-instrument comparison provides cross-validation for key ecological variables like leaf area index.
Data collection includes both nadir and off-nadir (15, 30, 45-degree) viewing angles from aircraft radiometers.
Measurements were taken under a range of solar illumination conditions, as mentioned in the description.
Limitations
Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
Data is from a specific 10-day campaign in 1997; temporal coverage is limited.
Provenance
Source
NASA Earth Observing System Prototype Validation Exercise (PROVE).
Collection Method
Field measurements from four ground instruments and aircraft-based radiometric data collection.
Time Range
May 20-30, 1997.
Freshness
Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.