ORNL DAAC Request for New GCMD Project: ASCENT

[ORNL - yaxingwei]

Hi,

The ORNL DAAC needs a new GCMD project vocabulary entry, here are the details:

Type: Project
Short name: ASCENT
Long name: Airborne Surface, Cryosphere, Ecosystem, and Nearshore Topography

Definition: NASA’s Airborne Surface, Cryosphere, Ecosystem, and Nearshore Topography (ASCENT) project is a series of coordinated airborne and field campaigns designed to advance the Surface Topography and Vegetation (STV) targeted observable - a high-priority goal identified in the NASA Earth Science Decadal Survey. The goal of ASCENT is to collect near-contemporaneous lidar, radar, and stereoimaging surrogate data, sampled from a variety of targets and configurations, to develop algorithms to separate vegetation from bare Earth topography, separate shallow water from bare Earth topography, retrieve snow and ice depth, and generate fused product of bare Earth and vegetation structure. ASCENT plans three annual campaigns for the East Coast, West Coast, and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific during 2025-2027. Key airborne instruments include the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), the Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS), the Quantifying Uncertainty and Kinematics of Earth Systems Imager (QUAKES-I), and the Concurrent Artificially intelligent Spectrometry and Adaptive Lidar System (CASALS). Contemporaneous in-situ measurements are collected as ground truth data to calibrate and validate the airborne measurements. The data and results from ASCENT serve as a testbed for future satellite missions. ASCENT informs the design of the eventual STV spaceborne observing system, which will monitor global changes in ice sheets, biomass, and coastal sea-level rise.

References:
• https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/decadal-stv/ascent/
• https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/stv-airborneplanning20240822.pdf

Please let me know if you have any questions or need additional information.

Thanks,
Yaxing

[GCMD - tstevens]

Thank you for your keyword request. We will review it and let you know when it is complete.

[GCMD - tstevens]

@ORNL - yaxingwei
The new project keyword has been added; please review:
ASCENT > Airborne Surface, Cryosphere, Ecosystem, and Nearshore Topography: https://cmr.earthdata.nasa.gov/kms/concept/e4499c39-7f8f-426c-9ba6-28c0b424c5a5?format=json&version=draft