The 2016 NASA AfriSAR campaign: Airborne SAR and Lidar measurements of tropical forest structure and biomass in support of future satellite missions

Background The AfriSAR campaign was a joint NASA and European Space Agency airborne campaign conducted in Gabon in support of the upcoming ESA BIOMASS, NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) and NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Initiative (GEDI) missions. The aim of the campaign was to collect ground, airborne SAR and airborne Lidar data for the development and evaluation of forest structure and biomass retrieval algorithms. The campaign consisted of two deployments, the first in 2015 with the ONERA SETHI SAR system and the second in 2016 with the NASA LVIS (Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor) Lidar, the NASA L-band UAVSAR and the DLR F-SAR. In addition, field teams from the Gabon ANPN (Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux), University College London and NASA were collecting ground data. Here we focus on the 2016 NASA contributions to campaign.