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^oN,106.996855^oW) and Kettle Ponds (38.942005^oN,106.973006^oW) in the East River Watershed in Colorado from a series of flights starting on June 1st, 2022 and ending October 19th, 2022.  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.zip 

where

L2 = Level 2 data 

yyyymmdd = year,month,day

hhmmss = hour,minute,second

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.