ECO-3D was a NASA field campaign focused on studying the three-dimensional structure of vegetation to quantify the amount of stored carbon in biomass. It included one deployment based out of Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) during the boreal summer of 2011. NASA’s P-3 aircraft was equipped with three instruments: the Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR), the Digital Beam-forming Synthetic Aperture Radar (DBSAR), and the Swath Imaging Multi-polarization Photon-counting Lidar (SIMPL) to collect remotely sensed measurements of vegetation. ECO-3D was funded through NASA's Airborne Science Program.
The Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR) is an airborne multichannel scanning radiometer developed by the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). CAR measures scattered radiance and bidirectional surface reflectance across 14 spectral bands spanning the visible and near-infrared wavelengths (0.34-2.30 µm). It also captures imagery of cloud and surface features on Earth. CAR has a scan rate of 1.67 Hz (100 rpm) and a spatial resolution of 4 meters at nadir from an altitude of 200 meters above ground.
Earth Science > Atmosphere > Clouds > Cloud Radiative Transfer
The Digital Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar (DBSAR) is an airborne L-band (1.26 GHz) radar system developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). It uses polarimetric and interferometric digital beamforming to capture radar imagery. DBSAR has three operational modes: scatterometer, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and SAR altimeter. It provides a slant-range resolution of 7.5 meters and a subarray 3-dB beamwidth of 106 degrees.
The Slope Imaging Multi-polarization Photon-counting Lidar (SIMPL) is an airborne, multi-beam, single-photon ranging lidar developed through the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) Instrument Incubator Program (IIP). It measures lidar scattering properties to determine topography, surface roughness, vegetation characteristics, and surface elevation, typically for cryospheric research. SIMPL consists of four beams operating at green (532 nm) and near-infrared (1064 nm) wavelengths. It has a laser footprint of 0.3 m and a cross-track spacing of 8 m at a nominal flight altitude of 3.7 km.
