CASEI: A Discovery Catalog of NASA Airborne and Field Campaigns
Satellite data is likely the first thing that comes to mind when most people think about NASA Earth observation data. Far fewer people know that NASA also relies on a host of other platforms for measuring Earth’s characteristics and for performing important science research. These include airborne (planes, drones, rockets, balloons), ocean (ships, boats, buoys and recently saildrones), or ground-based platforms (vehicles, trailers, observation towers, temporary field stations). Data collected by instruments on these types of platforms are important to the study of a variety of phenomena from hurricanes to lightning, atmospheric chemistry to air quality, algal blooms to climate-related variations in sea ice, surface water, and land cover changes.
One way NASA funds science is through field campaigns or investigations that target specific research questions or the validation of satellite instruments and algorithms. Field campaign data are stored and maintained at various NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). Tools currently exist at several DAACs to locate or use airborne and field data, but these tools are specific to each DAAC and only represent a small portion of the campaign data. This makes it difficult for a user to discover, locate, and access data for many reasons, including the use of incorrect or incomplete metadata that prevents proper tool function. In addition, quite a bit of historical data remains unpublished — not at a DAAC where users expect to find the data.. A new, detailed inventory of NASA’s campaigns aims to improve data and information access for all airborne and field data users.
The web-based Catalog of Archived Suborbital Earth Science Investigations (CASEI) [pronounced “kay see”], has been developed by IMPACT’s Airborne Data Management Group (ADMG). CASEI provides quick access to detailed information about NASA’s airborne and field investigations along with links to associated data products. CASEI is a unique inventory that provides intensively curated information about the context, research motivation, funding, and details of non-satellite instruments and platforms. Information about important events and observations are included, along with links to relevant data products, all in a single, intuitive, and highly interconnected web user interface.
ADMG team member Camille Woods describes the curation process:
Our CASEI metadata curation efforts revolve around locating and recording valuable information on airborne and field investigations. From tracking when/where the campaign occurred to who was involved, and even noting the more active time periods in the data, an entity we’ve termed ‘significant events’, the level of detail put into this curation will help users spend less time locating this information on their own.
ADMG seeks to make airborne and field investigation data discoverable and accessible to a broad range of users, even those outside of the Earth science research community. This was a key motivator in the development of CASEI. Before CASEI’s conception, the team knew they wanted a public-facing user interface for the inventory that would meet the needs of many users. Team member and lead of the inventory effort, Dr. Stephanie Wingo, explains part of the benefit CASEI delivers to the Earth science community:
My own previous experience as an Earth science researcher granted me a very real appreciation for the challenges of (1) identifying if there are data available already to support a particular science question and (2) figuring out where and how, exactly, to access the data. The effort our team is putting into CASEI ensures a smoother process for both of these issues, and in doing so can substantially increase the scientific return on NASA’s investment in collecting these unique airborne and field observations.
CASEI provides a streamlined search and discovery interface for exploring NASA’s airborne and field campaign observations, with a trove of important contextual information critical to the interpretation and use of the data. Airborne enthusiasts can use CASEI to locate valuable information such as the types of instruments flown on their favorite aircraft, and researchers can find the dates and events provided by key observations addressing the scientific goals of their projects. Chemists and public health researchers can be directed to campaigns involving air chemistry and/or air quality observations relevant to their applications. Likewise, marine biologists and those in the biogeochemistry communities can locate NASA observations helpful for furthering our understanding of the dynamic interactions between the ocean, land, and atmosphere.
The work required to develop and release CASEI is extensive. The ADMG team members are collecting and curating metadata for all known NASA campaigns (to date there are 149). The amount of effort needed is dictated by the care the team uses in validating any gathered information. CASEI was recently launched with metadata and data product links for about forty of NASA’s airborne and field campaigns. As ADMG staff continue curating the detailed information, they expect to provide roughly half of NASA’s known campaigns by October 2021.
Now, individuals that tend to associate NASA only with space exploration can get a glimpse of the valuable work the agency does much closer to home.
Explore CASEI at https://impact.earthdata.nasa.gov/casei/
More information about IMPACT can be found at NASA Earthdata and the IMPACT project website. More about ADMG is at NASA Earthdata ADMG.
