2023 ECCOE UAS Multispectral and Hyperspectral Imagery Radiometric Calibration Evaluation Field Data

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists and engineers from the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS) Calibration/Validation Center of Excellence (ECCOE) and the National Uncrewed Systems Office (NUSO) conducted field data collection efforts July 15 – 18, 2023 at the USGS EROS facility in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. The data collected included multispectral (MS) and hyperspectral (HS) imagery from two commonly used Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) mounted cameras, as well as field spectrometer measurements collected from the ground. The work was initiated to assess the radiometric quality of the imagery collected by the MS and HS cameras when the cameras were calibrated using their respective manufactures’ recommended procedures and to see if the quality could be improved by implementing the Empirical Line Method (ELM). Additionally, several different calibration targets were deployed to determine the impacts of target size, material, reflectance intensity, and quantity on the ELM for UAS data. Only the data from the noon collection on July 18 is provided in this data release as the other collections were impacted by wildfire smoke, clouds, aerosol, and/or gimbal issues. See the associated journal publication for further details.