Airborne Observations
One of NEON’s goals is to provide detailed aerial data about regional landscapes and vegetation. This will be accomplished via the remote sensing arm of NEON, called the Airborne Observation Platform (AOP). The AOP platforms will consist of instrumentation deployed on three aircraft that fly scientist-defined and routine patterns over all NEON sites.
The aircraft-mounted instrumentation includes an imaging spectrometer operating in the visible to shortwave IR spectral region, a waveform light detection and ranging (wLiDAR) instrument, and a high-resolution digital camera. The imaging spectrometer is used to create an image of the ground at narrow wavelength bands in the visible and short wave infrared parts of the light spectrum. The wLiDAR sends out a laser pulse and measures the time difference between the outgoing and returning light to determine the structure of vegetation and buildings below. The digital camera provides detailed aerial views of the regional landscape.
The AOP instrument suite will provide regional observations of:
- Land use;
- Vegetation structure;
- Biochemical and biophysical properties of vegetation; and
- Ecosystem responses to changes in land use, climate, and the movement of invasive species.
These observations will provide a means for scaling data taken from small areas on the ground at all of the NEON sites to the continental scale.
The observations of the AOP, in addition to data collected via the FSU and FIU programs, will allow scientists to study ecology at a continental scale.