SAFARI 2000 ER-2 Color-Infrared Aerial Photography

3,046 color-infrared transparencies were captured from a NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft during the SAFARI 2000 Dry Season Aircraft Campaign in August and September 2000. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) has archived scanned subsets of this imagery, including 515 frames digitized by the University of the Witwatersrand. This collection provides spatially detailed documentation of parts of southern Africa for atmospheric and ecological research.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite-derived land cover and fire scar maps using high-resolution color-infrared aerial frames.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of vegetation and surface reflectance across the SAFARI study area.
• Providing ground-truth or contextual imagery for atmospheric aerosol and trace gas measurements taken during the campaign.

Strengths

• Contains 3,046 original high-altitude color-infrared transparencies, offering a large collection of analog data.
• Includes 515 scanned digital image frames, providing a direct digital access point for a subset.
• Imagery was captured during a focused, major international campaign (SAFARI 2000) over a specific two-month period.

Limitations

• The dataset is a subset of scanned imagery; the full collection of 3,046 frames is not fully digitized and available online.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between sources (2000-09-25 and 2026-03-12), creating uncertainty about metadata maintenance.
• Specific column names, image dimensions, and precise geolocation data are not provided in the available metadata.

Provenance

Source

NASA ER-2 aircraft, archived by ORNL DAAC with contributions from NASA ARC and University of the Witwatersrand.

Collection Method

Aerial photography collected via high-altitude aircraft during a coordinated dry season campaign.

Time Range

August 2000 to September 2000

Freshness

2026-03-12 21:49:38.809425

Geography

Parts of the SAFARI 2000 study area in southern Africa.