Remotely sensed data and field measurements of water depth and percent cover of benthic algae from two reaches of the Buffalo National River in Arkansas acquired in August 2021

This data release includes field measurements and remotely sensed data from two reaches of the Buffalo National River in northern Arkansas acquired in August and September of 2021 to support research on remote sensing of benthic algae from aerial photographs and satellite images. This landing page has links to child items where each type of data can be accessed: Field measurements of water depth and percent cover of benthic algae acquired August 24-25, 2021. This ground-based data set was used to calibrate spectrally based models for inferring water depths from passive optical image data, assess the accuracy of image-derived depth estimates, and train classifications of benthic algal coverage. Digital aerial photographs acquired on August 24, 2021. The images included in this data release were obtained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service using a PhaseOne iXURS-1000 4-band (RGB and NIR) 100 mega-pixel digital camera. The original images were used to to generate orthophotos that are provided as GeoTIFF tiles. Multispectral satellite images were acquired between August 6, 2021, and September 15, 2021 by the WorldView3 and Planet SkySat sensors and are provided as GeoTIFF files. Overall, the field measurements, orthophotos, and satellite images included in this data release were used to produce spectrally based depth estimates and classifications of benthic algal coverage.