Hyperspectral orthorectified reflectance images from Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) surveys of dryland sites 40 km south of Moab, Utah in May 2023

In support of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Southwest Biological Science Center researchers, and in coordination with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), the USGS National Uncrewed Systems Office (NUSO) conducted uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) remote sensing flights over two BLM Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) plots at the NEON Moab site in Utah for multi-scale carbon sequestration research on public lands. The UAS data collected include natural color, multispectral, and hyperspectral imagery, and lidar to capture diverse information about vegetation and soils on drylands. The first site (“site 1”) features intact sagebrush and was mapped on May 3, 2023. The second site (“site 7”) is located on a grazed rangeland environment and was mapped on May 5, 2023. These UAS surveys were conducted in early May 2023 to coincide spatially and temporally with ground-based BLM AIM sampling and airplane-based remote sensing surveys by NEON. This portion of the data release presents hyperspectral data products from low-altitude UAS flights at two dryland sites approximately 40 km south of Moab, Utah. A Headwall Nano-Hyperspec line scanning sensor was flown at an altitude of 31 meters above ground level on a DJI Matrice 600 Pro UAS with approved government edition firmware. The hyperspectral images were post-processed using the sensor manufacturer's proprietary software and following their recommended workflow. The orthorectified hyperspectral reflectance images are stored as 32-bit single precision floating point numbers in flat binary files with a band sequential (BSQ) interleave. Each image is accompanied by an ASCII text header file (.hdr) containing band center wavelengths and other parameters relevant to the images. Each image has 274 spectral bands spanning the visible and near infrared wavelengths, 398 to 1002 nm. The images were georeferenced to a geographic coordinate system (latitude and longitude) and WGS84 datum with spatial resolution 1.7 cm (site 1) and 1.5 cm (site 7). There are 30 hyperspectral images with accompanying header files captured at site 1, provided in 5 zip folders to facilitate bulk download. There are 33 hyperspectral images with accompanying header files captured at site 7, provided in 5 zip folders.

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  "geospatial"
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