Title: The NASA AfriSAR Campaign: Airborne SAR and Lidar Measurements of
Tropical Forest Structure and Biomass in Support of Future Space
Missions
Abstract
In 2015 and 2016, the AfriSAR campaign was carried out as a
collaborative effort among international space and National Park
agencies (ESA, NASA, ONERA, DLR, ANPN and AGEOS) in support of the
upcoming ESA BIOMASS, NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) and
NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Initiative (GEDI) missions. The NASA
contribution to the campaign was conducted in 2016 with the NASA LVIS
(Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor) Lidar, the NASA L-band UAVSAR
(Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar). A central
motivation for the AfriSAR deployment was the common AGBD estimation
requirement for the three future spaceborne missions, the lack of
sufficient airborne and ground calibration data covering the full range
of ABGD in tropical forest systems, and the intercomparison and fusion
of the technologies. During the campaign, over 7000 km2 of waveform
Lidar data from LVIS and 30000 km2 of UAVSAR data were collected over 10
key sites and transects. In addition, field measurements of forest
structure and biomass were collected in sixteen 1 hectare sized plots.
The campaign produced gridded Lidar canopy structure products, gridded
aboveground biomass and associated uncertainties, Lidar based vegetation
canopy cover profile products, Polarimetric Interferometric SAR and
Tomographic SAR products and field measurements. Our results showcase
the types of data products and scientific results expected from the
spaceborne Lidar and SAR missions; we also expect that the AfriSAR
campaign data will facilitate further analysis and use of waveform Lidar
and multiple baseline polarimetric SAR datasets for carbon cycle,
biodiversity, water resources and more applications by the greater
scientific community.