Bridging Spatiotemporal Gaps in Climate Science with NEON's Airborne Remote-Sensing Geoscience Observation Node (ARGON)

Every second, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) collects thousands of in-situ, sensor-based measurements that inform the state of the local ecosystem and climate. The NEON project also has an Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) that collects hyperspectral and high resolution LiDAR imagery of many NEON sites on an annual basis. These methods of data collection are vital to the success of the observatory, but have inherent limitations that introduce a gap at spatiotemporal resolutions vital for quantifying ecosystem health and characteristics.

In early 2018 the NEON purchased three types of unmanned aerial systems (UASs), and two different multispectral cameras. Data from these drones and cameras, collectively dubbed the Airborne Remote-sensing Geoscience Observation Node (ARGON), were validated against data from the AOP during coincidental calibration flights. Flights were conducted throughout the summer of 2018 using different combinations of each multispectral camera (the Slantrange 3P© and Micasense Red Edge©) and drone (the DJI Phantom 4 Quadcopter, DJI Matrice 210, and DJI Matrice 600). Data from the ARGON flights were validated against data from the coincidental AOP flights to demonstrate ARGON’s capability to accurately quantify parameters such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and albedo. These validation flights provided a limited, but valuable, set of measurements that inform components of ecosystem health and climate-related data products. The successful completion of these flight campaigns hint that ARGON could be a reliable and feasible means of not only expanding the temporal coverage of remotely sensed data products, but also expanding the spatial coverage of in-situ measurements. The ARGON platforms could one day be outfitted with a variety of different sensors that could be swapped out depending on the needs of the project. These could include a full hyperspectral imaging spectrometer, thermal cameras, and LIDAR.

Here, we present results from the coincidental flight campaigns, discuss future implementations of ARGON, and investigate potential collaboration opportunities.