Increasing Data Access in Multi-Sensor Airborne Campaigns: Lessons from BioSCape in South Africa

BioSCape, or the Biodiversity Survey of the Cape, is NASA’s first biodiversity-focused integrated remote sensing field campaign. The campaign aims to better understand the structure, function, and composition of the region’s ecosystems, and to learn about how and why they are changing in time. To do this, airborne and field data were collected across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in the Greater Cape Floristic Region in southwestern South Africa in 2023. Airborne acquisitions included data from three imaging spectrometers sampling across the electromagnetic spectrum (UVSWIR and TIR) and coincident full-waveform lidar data. Field datasets included measurements to quantify the diversity of plant communities including alien invasives and kelp, phytoplankton functional types, phylogenetic histories, eDNA in watersheds, bird and frog acoustics, plant functional and spectral traits, blue carbon, and in-water radiometry. BioSCape’s airborne and field datasets are diverse and complex, and the airborne data in particular is not inherently easy to use. In this paper we outline the procedures BioSCape followed to ensure maximum impact of the data and support of Open Science and FAIR data principles [1].