Engage with BioSCape
Apply for a NASA Posdoctoral Position at JPL
JPL has released a call for research proposals, specifically soliciting those that have applied relevance to biodiversity conservation in South Africa, particularly those looking to assess ecosystem condition using remote sensing. If you would like the input of the BioSCape leadership team on your proposal, we would be very happy to engage. This position is not limited to US citizens and permanent residents. This is a competitive application, and filling the position is not guaranteed.
Review content from our latest Training Workshop
BioSCape recently held a 3-day in-person data analysis workshop in Cape Town, South Africa. The workshop equipped participants with the skills to find, subset, and visualize the various BioSCape field and airborne (imaging spectroscopy and full-waveform lidar) data sets. Participants learned data skills through worked examples in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, including: wrangling lidar data, performing band math calculations, calculating spectral diversity metrics, machine learning and image classification, and mapping functional traits using partial least squares regression.
Catch up with BioSCape content from ESA
We recently presented a special session at the Ecological Society of America meeting. The session introduced how to access and analyze some of the BioSCape data products.
Check out data from previous NASA airborne projects
This will help you get an idea of the kinds of airborne data products you can expect from BioSCape.
AVIRIS-NG data from other projects
PRISM data from other projects
Use EMIT, ECOSTRESS, PACE, and GEDI data
Download data from NASA's EMIT, ECOSTRESS, PACE, or GEDI satellite sensors over the BioSCape study region to practise working with these new types of data.
EMIT and ECOSTRESS are imaging spectrometers aboard the International Space Station that collects data similar to AVIRIS-NG and HyTES imaging spectrometers. PACE is a new ocean color instrument similar to PRISM, and GEDI is a lidar instrument that collected data similar to the LVIS instrument in BioSCape.
Training resources on how to use these data are available- for example you can learn how to Apply ECOSTRESS and EMIT to Ecological Problems, access the EMIT Workshop Website, or learn how to work with EMIT and PACE data or EMIT and NEON data together.
Complete our online Training Course
The ARSET training series Biodiversity Applications for Airborne Imaging Systems is freely available to watch online. The course highlighted the use of hyperspectral Visible to Shortwave Infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectroscopy data, for example from AVIRIS-NG and PRISM instruments, for measuring and monitoring terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity (e.g., mapping plant or phytoplankton functional types). The series also focused on using thermal and lidar data for characterizing the structure and function of ecosystems using airborne campaigns including the Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES) and NASA's Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS).
Review material from our Spectroscopy Workshop
You can watch a recording of the introductory lectures, and slides are available for additional content about i) Foliar Trait Modeling, ii) Field Spectroscopy Best Practices, and iii) Aquatic Field Spectroscopy. This workshop was supported by UNESCO.
Inspect BioSCape's airborne data coverage
The BioSCape data portal currently holds all quicklooks from the project - this shows you where data was collected. Toggle layers on and off in the left hand panel to view acquisitions from different sensors, and zoom in and out to see if your region of interest was flown.
Contribute to iNaturalist
If you are in the 'BioSCape domain' in South Africa, you can help by making observations that are broadly useful to BioSCape on iNaturalist, a citizen science platform. We will use these observations in research to assess spatial variability in species richness across the Greater Cape Floristic Region.
Access other South African biodiversity data
The South African national biodiversity Institute (SANBI) has an excellent GIS database with interactive mapping, biodiversity data, training, and legislation.
BioSCape data was collected under the appropriate permits and permissions from governmental and other agencies.