ABoVE Airborne SAR Flight Metadata for Arctic Surveys

NASA's Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) provides metadata for approximately 80 L-band and P-band synthetic aperture radar flight lines. The dataset covers surveys over 120,000 square kilometers in Alaska and northwestern Canada from 2012 to 2022, with intensive campaigns in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022. It serves as a guide to explore the full ABoVE SAR data collection, including legacy lines for extended time series analysis.

Use Cases

• Analyzing flight line spatial coverage and timing for specific study regions using provided maps and hyperlinks.
• Creating extended time series of Arctic conditions by integrating legacy (2012-2015) and core ABoVE (2017-2022) survey metadata.
• Assessing experimental design by examining how each of the ~80 flight lines fits into the broader ABoVE campaign objectives.

Strengths

• Covers a significant spatial area of over 120,000 square kilometers in the Arctic.
• Provides detailed descriptions for approximately 80 distinct SAR flight lines.
• Enables decade-long analysis with data spanning from 2012 to 2022.

Limitations

• Core column names and dataset size are not specified on any platform.
• Conflicting last updated dates exist between sources (2026-03 12 on Data.gov vs. 2022-12-31 on NASA Earthdata).
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE).

Collection Method

Airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) surveys conducted during dedicated flight campaigns.

Time Range

2012 to 2022

Freshness

2026-03-12 19:40:37.890191

Geography

Alaska and northwestern Canada.