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Full catalog/MASTER_GEMx_Spring_2024_2370
MASTER_GEMx_Spring_2024_2370·v1·dataset

Aircraft mineral mapping of rocks and soil (GEMx, spring 2024)

MASTER: Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx), Spring 2024
land NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 1B multiple
In plain English

What it measures. Aircraft imagery of the ground across parts of California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona, recording how much energy surfaces reflected and emitted across 50 wavelength bands from visible light through thermal infrared, at about 50 m detail. Derived layers add surface heat-emission properties and land surface temperature.

How it's made. Collected by the MASTER instrument flown on a NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft during 26 flights in spring 2024, as part of a project to map critical minerals.

How & where you'd use it. Helps geologists identify and map rocks, soils, and minerals across arid southwestern US landscapes.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › THERMAL INFRAREDSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2024-04-02 → 2024-06-24
  • Measured byNASA ER-2 (MASTER)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-124.264, 31.1411, -106.87, 45.09
  • Formatsmultiple
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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 includes Level 1B (L1B) data products from the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument. The spectral data were collected during 26 flights aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft over California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona, US, from 2024-04-02 to 2024-06-24. The Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx) research project used NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES), and MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instruments to collect the measurements over the country's arid and semi-arid regions, including parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, to map portions of southwest US for critical minerals. Data products include L1B georeferenced multispectral imagery of calibrated radiance in 50 bands covering wavelengths of 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers at approximately 50-meter spatial resolution. Derived L2 data products are emissivity in five bands in thermal infrared range (8.58 to 12.13 micrometers) and land surface temperature. The L1B file format is HDF-4, and L2 products are provided in ENVI and KMZ formats. In addition, the dataset includes the flight path, spectral band information, instrument configuration, ancillary notes, and summary information for each flight, and browse images derived from each L1B data file.

Get the data

master_gemx_spring_2024_2370_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MASTER_GEMx_Spring_2024_2370",
    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.