 Remote sensing data collection by the Neon Airborne Observation Platform, or AOP, are carefully planned, implemented, and monitored each year to guarantee high-quality consistent data. Before each field season, Neon develops a schedule of field sites that will be flown and a travel plan for each of the planes. Flight survey schedules are designed to coincide with the expected peak greenness at each site. The travel schedule for the planes includes several days at each site to allow flexibility for accommodating weather conditions. Neon protocols require less than 10% cloud cover. Raw or level zero data are collected by remote sensing instruments mounted in a twin otter airplane. These instruments are monitored 24-7 by a Neon telemetry service that automatically notifies staff of any irregularities in the systems. Onboard calibration for the imaging spectrometer is collected before and after each flight line. The LiDAR is also equipped with an onboard quality metric system that continuously measures the shape of the outgoing and return pulses. During flights, the instruments are also closely monitored by two airborne sensor operators that can quickly assess and fix any issues that may arise while in the air. As the data are collected, they're stored on a series of hard drives mounted on the plane. After the flight, the plane-mounted hard drives are downloaded to a hotel kit, which is a custom-built computer that travels with the plane and specializes in large data transfers. These data are analyzed, verified, and backed up by the hotel kit. The data are also copied to a series of external hard drives referred to as the Pony Express that are shipped to Neon's data center in Denver for download, processing, and storage. With each flight generating over 500 gigabytes of data, shipping through regular posts is still faster than electronic transfer. Once the hard drives arrive at the data center, they are manually ingested into Neon's secured Elastic Cloud Storage System, or ECS. The Pony Express drives are then stored as backup, and the data from the hotel kit is cleared for the next flight. Data back in the ECS are systematically pulled into a series of high-powered data processing machines that run calculations, corrections, and quality control algorithms. This process transforms the data from raw level 0 to level 1, 2, and 3 products. The data products are returned to the ECS where one last round of data quality assurance is run, and metadata describing flight conditions and their impact on data quality are provided with each product. Finally, Neon scientists link the new data products to the Neon data portal where they can be downloaded freely. Have more questions? Send an inquiry to our team.