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10/29/2013

CARVE has publicly released of all the 2012 Alaska data set.

CARVE team members were interviewed for an episode of the Weather Channel’s Tipping Point series. The episode, “The Permafrost of the high Arctic”, will air at 6 p.m. on November 2.

10/26/2013

The CARVE crew 4 flight days and ~21 flight hours over, Barrow, Deadhorse, Minto Flats (twice), and Fort Yukon, Alaska.

On October 26, CARVE flight crew was very surprised to observe greatly enhanced CO2 and CH4 signals while flying over the Minto Flats area.

08/30/2013

AirMOSS successfully completed the ten day campaign imaging its three East Coast forest sites. The radar imaged each of the science sites at Howland Forest, Harvard Forest, and Duke Forest three times over the campaign. Concurrent with the radar imaging, teams from JPL and Harvard University were in the field at the Howland Forest and Harvard Forest sites, respectively, collecting in-situ soil moisture data. In addition, Purdue University's ALAR instrument conducted atmospheric science measurements at all three East Coast forest sites. The ALAR data will be used to validate the AirMOSS Net Ecosystem Exchange products. The Radar team has begun delivery of Level 1-S0 data products for BERMS, Metolius, and MOISST data acquired in July and August 2013 to the science team.

08/30/2013
Inspection and detection of citrus trees are the first lines of defense against the spread of Huanglongbing (HLB), a bacterial disease spread by an insect known as the “Asian Citrus Psyllid.” The California Citrus Research Board has enlisted the aid of NASA through a “Space Act Agreement” signed earlier this year. With funding provided by the CRB, researchers are experimenting with the use of NASA’s AVIRIS to produce aerial maps of the distribution of citrus trees to help guide inspection efforts. The maps for this study will be able to distinguish details larger than 4 m (12 feet).The researchers also expect that AVIRIS will be able to distinguish infected trees from healthy trees and propose to test that capability in 2014. The ability to survey hundreds of thousands of acres from the air in a matter of days could be crucial to the early detection of the spread of the disease into new areas.
 
The initial airborne campaign, using AVIRIS installed in a DHC-6 contracted from Twin Otter International, was conducted last week. Three days of flight data were collected over several areas in the central valley and southern California.
 
Capitalizing on the citrus campaign, an additional flight day was obtained last week to explore the capabilities of imaging spectroscopy to characterize nitrogen and water stresses in maize, sorghum, and tomato plants. The flights lines were selected to cover a set of field experimental trials that are being conducted at the Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture facility outside of Davis, California to induce specific gradients of stress in the agricultural systems. The unique capabilities of AVIRIS were used to evaluate the ability of imaging spectroscopy data to constrain canopy biochemical and energy balance parameters. Field measurements were also made to link airborne imagery to canopy structure and biogeochemistry and to facilitate canopy radiation transfer modeling.
08/23/2013

AirMOSS began another ten day campaign imaging its three East Coast forest sites on August 18. The radar will image each of the science sites at Howland Forest, Harvard Forest, and Duke Forest three times over the campaign. Concurrent with the radar imaging, teams from JPL and Harvard University are in the field at the Howland Forest and Harvard Forest sites, respectively, collecting in-situ soil moisture data. In addition, Purdue University's ALAR instrument is doing atmospheric science measurements at the East Coast forest sites this week. The ALAR data will be used to validate the AirMOSS Net Ecosystem Exchange products.

08/23/2013

CARVE flew 2 flight days last week for a total of 15 science flight hours over Innoko and Nome, Alaska. On August 14, with more bad weather approaching, the CARVE team concluded the August campaign; CARVE flew 42 science flight hours, over 13 calendar days in August.

08/12/2013

AirMOSS completed the Bozeman, Montana deployment and conducted three flights. The flights were conducted over Metolius, OR and BERMS, Saskatchewan. Tonzi Ranch flights originally scheduled for August are on hold because the team was not able to get approval from Beale AFB to operate the radar. The next science campaign is scheduled for mid-August in the east coast. In the past two weeks, fifty-five L1-S0 data sets were released to the science team containing data acquired in April and June 2013. Science team members also released L2 soil moisture products acquired last fall and this spring over Harvard, Howland, and La Selva.

08/12/2013

The CARVE team arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska and started August flight operations. As of August 4, the CARVE team had accrued ~ 14 science flight hours, including flights over Deadhorse, Fort Yukon, and Minto flats.

08/12/2013

The team successfully completed two Mexico flights last week for the solid earth deformation study. During the month of July, 171 PolSAR and 37 RPI L-band science products were released. The team is in the process of putting a plan together and schedule for RPI browse and SLC product delivery. New calibration files were also generated for the last L-band (and P-band) engineering flights; the processor calibration algorithm was updated to increase calibration-phase accuracy.

08/01/2013

The P-band radar has successfully completed two observations each over Metolius Pine, Oregon and BERMS, Saskatchewan. There is one more flight over each site left before heading back to Houston, TX. Weather conditions have been cooperating at both sites. Soil moisture at BERMS was wet (20-30 percent moisture) due to rain in the preceding week. The in-ground sensors observed a drying trend, which will be a good test for the sensitivity of the soil moisture retrieval algorithm.

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