Calibrated raw aircraft imaging-spectrometer light (AVIRIS-3)
What it measures. Calibrated readings of the light reflected from the surface and atmosphere across hundreds of fine color bands, from visible into shortwave infrared, captured by an aircraft spectrometer.
How it's made. Produced from the AVIRIS-3 imaging spectrometer flown on research aircraft, processed to calibrated radiance with viewing geometry and georeferencing included.
How & where you'd use it. A detailed building-block input scientists use to map minerals, vegetation, and surface materials; higher-level analyses are typically built from it rather than reading it raw.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2023-07-05 → ongoing
- Measured byG-V (AVIRIS-3) · NASA ER-2 (AVIRIS-3) · B-200 (AVIRIS-3) · G-III (AVIRIS-3)
- Processing levelLevel 1B
- Spatial extent-178.68, 16.5, -66.18, 72.6
- Formatsmultiple
- StatusACTIVE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
This dataset contains Level 1B (L1B) calibrated radiance images as well as observational geometry and illumination parameters from the Airborne Visible / Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3 (AVIRIS-3) instrument. This is the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) facility instrument archive of these data. The NASA AVIRIS-3 is a spectral mapping system that measures reflected radiance at 7.4-nm intervals in the Visible to Shortwave Infrared (VSWIR) spectral range from 390-2500 nm. The AVIRIS-3 sensor has a 40 degree instantaneous field of view with 1234 pixels, providing altitude dependent ground sampling distances from 12 m to sub meter range. This spectrometer measures radiance from surface and atmosphere and is extremely similar in design to the orbital Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) spectrometer. AVIRIS-3 has been designed to fly on a variety of aircraft platforms including the King Air B-200, Gulfstream III, Gulfstream V, and ER-2. For each flight line, two file types are included: calibrated radiance (RDN) and orthocorrected observation geometry and illumination (ORT) in netCDF format. Both file types include a geolocation lookup table (GLT) for georeferencing pixels in UTM and geographic coordinates. A band mask file indicates whether wavelengths were interpolated on a per pixel basis. In addition, ancillary files for each flight line are provided, including a quick look image in JPEG format and text files in YAML format that document processing algorithms and parameters used during production.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="AV3_L1B_RDN_2356",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA
- ORNL DAAC Data Set Documentation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- AVIRIS-3 L1B Calibrated Radiance, Facility Instrument Collection: AV3_L1B_RDN.pdf VIEW RELATED INFORMATION