BST/NOAA PSL Level 2 UAS Soil Moisture, Digital Elevation, Normalized Difference Vegetative Index, and Surface Temperature for SPLASH

This dataset contains uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) high-resolution data of soil moisture at the 0-5 cm soil depth, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), surface temperature, and digital elevation for the Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere, and Surface for Hydrology (SPLASH) campaign sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  These data were collected near Avery Picnic (38.972425 degrees N,106.996855 degrees W) and Kettle Ponds (38.942005 degrees N,106.973006 degrees W) in the East River Watershed in Colorado from a series of flights starting on June 1st, 2022 and ending October 18th, 2023.  Soil moisture measurements were retrieved using the Lobe Differencing Correlation Radiometer (LDCR) which is a L-Band (1-2 GHz) microwave radiometer and was flown on the E2 and S2 aerial platforms operated by Black Swift Technologies LLC.  

Each zip file contains a set of four Level 2 NetCDF files which provides the highest spatial resolution available for each of four products for a given flight location.  With the Level 2 data, each flight location and variable can have different spatial resolutions depending on the sensor type, retrieval algorithm, and flight altitude.  The file name convention for the zip files is as follows.

uas_L2_yyyymmdd_hhmmss_vX.X.zip 

where

L2 = Level 2 data 

yyyymmdd = year,month,day

hhmmss = hour,minute,second

vX.X = version number

Time is the flight start time in UTC.

The NetCDF file format contained in the zip files has a similar format to the zip files with convention

uas_<var>_L2_yyyymmdd_hhmmss.nc 

where

<var> = vsm, dem, ndvi, or stmp

vsm = volumetric soil moisture

dem = digital elevation

ndvi = normalized difference vegetation index

stmp = surface temperature

Note that each flight location using the E2 aerial platform required two flights so starting flight times for the soil moisture NetCDF files are different from the other three products.

November 2023 update: Version 2.0 added flight data from 2023. Version 2.0 includes an updated calibration of the soil moisture retrieval that has been applied to 2023 data, and a mask was applied to the soil moisture retrieval over water surfaces for both 2022 and 2023 data.

December 2023 update: Version 2.1 updated soil moisture data with a wet bias in v2.0 for flights #2 (17:40:35 UTC) and #3 (19:24:45 UTC) on July 27, 2022.