What was the purpose of FLEX-US?

The primary goal of the 2013 joint ESA/NASA airborne campaign, the FLuorescence EXplorer Campaign in USA (FLEX-US), was to record an unprecedented FLEX-like dataset containing maps of sun-induced fluorescence, hyperspectral reflectance, surface temperature, and canopy structure.

The campaign brought together two unique instrument packages for vegetation studies of carbon cycle dynamics and ecosystem health.

What was the outcome of FLEX-US?

The results obtained within this campaign suggest that continuing to combine different instruments and their products, and as a next step including manipulating experiments in such measurement set-ups, would be greatly beneficial for further activities preparing the FLEX mission.

This dataset allowed for the first time the evaluation of the relationship between canopy temperature and structure on the one hand and canopy fluorescence on the other. Thus, this campaign collected the necessary remote sensing data from aircraft and ground-based data to monitor directly the energy budget, actual (as opposed to potential) photosynthesis, stress level responses, and canopy structure of forests, using hyperspectral reflectance, fluorescence, thermal imagery, and profiling lidar measurements.

Additionally, this campaign provided experience for a larger joint ESA/NASA campaign in Europe, as part of the Phase A/B1Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) mission and future joint projects (e.g., NASA Earth Venture).

Download the FLEX-US Final Report

Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-wv2khg2 - FLEX-US: "Technical Assistance for the Deployment of the Airborne HyPlant Imaging Spectrometer during 2013 ESA/NASA Joint FLEX-US (FLuorescence EXplorer experiment in USA) Campaign"

The campaign data is available online via FTPS upon submission of a data access request. An active EO Sign In account is required to submit the request.

The data can be downloaded via an FTP client (e.g., FileZilla or WinSCP) using the option "Implicit FTP over TLS".

For further information about the EO Sign In Service you can visit TellUs

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