rSpectral & ASTRAL: Interactive Tools for Analysis of Hyperspectral Reflectance Data Acquired through the NASA ABoVE Campaign

Changes in climate variability over the past decades have exacerbated many Arctic ecosystem changes such as coastal erosion, permafrost thaw and degradation, air temperature rise, snow cover and sea ice loss. To better understand these vulnerable ecosystems, NASA created the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) program to investigate links between changing land surface conditions and the vulnerability and resilience of the Arctic and Boreal ecosystems. To monitor changing Artic landscapes, detailed field measurements of vegetation optical properties along with corresponding airborne and satellite remote sensing observations, particularly, hyperspectral reflectance measurements have been widely used by NASA investigators. However, due to the size and complexity of data produced by such approaches, managing, analyzing, data sharing, and visualization has posed a great challenge for most of the ABoVE projects. Here, we present web based analytic tools capable of integrating spectral reflectance data from multiple investigators working in the ABoVE region using an open source software - R shiny. ASTRAL, currently maps over 8,000 spectra spanning nearly 10 observation sites across the ABoVE domain pertaining to multiple tundra vegetation species and communities. In combination, ASTRAL and rSpectral will combine to dynamically view, interact and discover optical properties of boreal and tundra plant communities. Users can view the hyperspectral reflectance scans and explore common spectral indices at multiple spatio-temporal scales. The overall goal is a tool that integrates diverse hyperspectral data streams and acts as a growing community database where PIs can easily submit data and access data to improve rapid change detection across the ABoVE domain.