Learn to Use Earth Data
About
Full catalog/ABoVE_L1_P_SAR_1800
ABoVE_L1_P_SAR_1800·v1·dataset

Radar echoes off Alaska and Canada land, from NASA's airborne UAVSAR radar (2017)

ABoVE: L1 S-0 Polarimetric Data from UAVSAR P-band SAR, Alaska and Canada, 2017
land NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 1A multiple
In plain English

What it measures. How strongly the land surface reflects radar signals across 74 sites in Alaska and western Canada, captured at low (P-band) radar frequencies that can sense into vegetation and soil.

How it's made. Flown on a NASA Gulfstream-III aircraft carrying the UAVSAR P-band radar in 2017; this is calibrated, map-located Level 1 radar data, one file per flight line.

How & where you'd use it. A lower-level input product used mainly by researchers to study northern landscapes, vegetation, and soil through higher-level analyses rather than directly.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › RADAR › SIGMA NAUGHT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2017-05-22 → 2017-08-18
  • Measured byUAV (UAVSAR) · G-III (P-SAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 1A
  • Spatial extent-166.61, 52.0777, -104.184, 71.4646
  • Formatsmultiple
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This dataset provides Level 1 (L1) polarimetric radar backscattering coefficient (Sigma-0 or S-0), multi-look complex, polarimetrically calibrated, and georeferenced data products from the UAVSAR P-band SAR radar instrument collected over 74 study sites across Alaska, USA, and western Canada. The radar instrument is a fully polarimetric P-band (ultra-high frequency) SAR operating in the 420-440 MHz band. The flight campaigns took place periodically in May-August 2017 onboard a NASA Gulfstream-III aircraft. Each set of products was produced from a data take (i.e., acquisition) of the UAVSAR P-band SAR radar instrument, where one data take is equivalent to one flight line over a site. Two to four data takes were sought for each site, although for some sites as few as one or as many as six are provided. There were a total of 139 data takes over the 74 sites.

Get the data

above_l1_p_sar_1800_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ABoVE_L1_P_SAR_1800",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.