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Aerial imagery and other remotely-sensed data from a UAS survey of Pepperwood Preserve, Sonoma County, CA

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2024-03-11T00:00:00Z
This data release contains Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) imagery from three data collection campaigns (flights) over the Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County, California. Each child item contains: 1) Orthophoto, 2) Thermal, 3) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), 4) L-band microwave brightness temperature (Tb), 5) Estimated soil moisture, and 6) Digital elevation model from orthoimagery. The overall footprint varies depending on the flight, and the third flight in May 2023 contains an additional set of high-resolution Tb and calculated soil moisture maps for a smaller footprint. The first two flights were performed using a BlackSwift S2, which is a fixed-wing UAS with a 3-meter wingspan, and the third flight was performed using a BlackSwift E2 multirotor UAS, which contained the same instruments as the S2. All files are raster (*.tif) files that can be visualized and edited by geospatial software including ArcGIS, QGIS, Python, and R. The spatial resolution of each raster is dependent on the instrument, type of UAS, and the UAS altitude during data collection. The UAS equipment was operated by personnel from BlackSwift Technologies, LLC, and data were provided to the U.S. Geological Survey.

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