The National Airborne Field Experiment Data Sets

The National Airborne Field Experiment's (NAFE) were a series of intensive experiments recently conducted in different parts of Australia. These hydrologic-focused experiments have been designed to answer a range of questions which can only be resolved through carefully planned and executed field experiments in well instrumented basins together with intensive ground and airborne measurements of the appropriate type and spatial/temporal resolution. While the data collected have a specific focus on soil moisture, they are applicable to a wide range of hydrologic activities. The NAFE'05 experiment was undertaken in the Goulburn River catchment (New South Wales, Australia) during November 2005, with the objective of providing high resolution data for process level understanding of soil moisture retrieval, scaling and data assimilation. The NAFE'06 experiment was undertaken in the Murrumbidgee catchment (NSW, Australia) during November 2006, with the objective of providing data for SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity; a dedicated soil moisture satellite to be launched in 2008) like soil moisture retrieval, downscaling and data assimilation. To meet these objectives, the Polarimetric L-band Multibeam Radiometer (PLMR), a thermal imager, full-wave transform lidar, tri-spectral scanner and digital camera were flown onboard a small aircraft, together with coincident ground data collection on soil moisture, rock coverage and temperature, surface roughness, land surface skin and soil temperature, vegetation dew amount and vegetation water content. Each campaign was 3 to 4 weeks in duration and encountered favourable meteorological conditions, meaning that data was collected across a range of soil moisture conditions. Moreover, data was collected across diverse landcover and landuse settings in two different climatic regimes. The data described in this paper are available on the World Wide Web at www.nafe.unimelb.edu.au.