AIRBORNE SPECTROMETER MEASUREMENTS FROM BOREAL AND TUNDRA SITE DURING SPRING SNOW MELT

The dataset contains 10 meter resolution reflectance data from boreal and tundra sites during spring snow melt. The purpose of the airborne measurements was to investigate the effect of forest canopy and snow melting on optical remote sensing signals at the very end of melting period. The hyperspectral airborne data was acquired with an AisaDUAL imaging spectrometer on 5 May 2011 in Sodankylä and in Saariselkä, Finland. Saariselkä is a fell region and partly represents open tundra. The image swath was 240 meters and flight lines were several kilometers long. The original spatial resolution of the data is 80 cm x 80 cm, but it was resampled to pixel size of 10 m x 10 m. Snow depth was between 0 cm and 30 cm at the Sodankylä site and between 0 cm and 60 cm at the Saariselkä site implying that the spring melt was clearly more advanced in Sodankylä. Additionally, more snow-free pixels were found at Sodankylä than Saariselkä. During the measurements the sky was cloudless in Sodankylä (cloud cover 0/8) and cloudy (cloud cover 7/8) in Saariselkä. The data contains mosaics of the flight lines for the bands 555 nm, 645 nm, 858.5 nm and 1640 nm for both study sites.