This ARSET training provided hands-on experiences on the use of hyperspectral in-situ field spectroradiometers for land and water targets as well as a first-view of some of the hyperspectral imagery collected during the BioSCape campaign. Participants used in-situ spectral data as means for validation of airborne imagery. 

We also explored aspects for consideration when working with airborne data such as sun glint, sun angle, aircraft (pitch, row, yaw) factors, among others and how these impact the image analysis. Participants explored differences between in-situ and image spectral signatures and how these differences are affected by image spatial resolution.

The two-day ARSET training was followed by a three-day workshop: Earthdata: BioSCape Data Skills Workshop: From the Field to the Image. The workshop equipped participants with the skills to find, subset, and visualize the various BioSCape field and airborne (imaging spectroscopy and full-waveform LiDAR) data sets as well as corresponding NASA Earthdata satellite datasets. 

Participants learned data skills through worked examples in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, including: wrangling LiDAR data, performing band math calculations, calculating spectral diversity metrics, machine learning and image classification, and mapping functional traits. The workshop format was a mix of expert talks and interactive coding notebooks and was be run through the BioSCape cloud computing environment. It was hosted by NASA’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC), in close collaboration with BioSCape, the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), the University of Wisconsin Madison, The Nature Conservancy, the University of California Merced, the University of Cape Town, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and UNESCO.

Dates

Oct. 7-11, 2024

Location

Cape Town, South Africa

Instructors

• ARSET: Justin Fain, Sativa Cruz, Juan Torres-Pérez
• Workshop Contributors: Anabelle Cardoso, Erin Hestir (University of California Merced), Phil Townsend (University of Wisconsin Madison), Henry Frye, Glenn Moncrieff (The Nature Conservancy), Jasper Slingsby (University of Cape Town), Michele Thornton, Rupesh Shrestha
• Virtual Contributors: Kerry Cawse-Nicholson (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Nico Stork, Kyle Kovach
• Cloud Computing Support: Alexey Shiklomanov, Evan Lang (NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre) and Amazon Web Services.

Prerequisites

Course Format