BioSCape South Africa 2023

In October/November 2023, NASA's LVIS Facility flew as a part of the Biodiversity Survey of the Cape (BioSCape) mission, an international collaboration between NASA and several organizations in South Africa to study biodiversity in South Africa's Greater Cape Floristic Region. Sixteen science flights were flown over ground targets identified by the BioSCape project to highlight the region's biodiversity and study the region's ecosystems to help address the information and decision-support needs of stakeholders in the region and internationally.


Flight trajectories are available on this page.


Use the python code posted here to view the data products from this mission.

LVIS Mission Information

LVIS Lidar
Instrument: LVIS-F
Flight Platform: NASA Gulfstream V
Nominal Flight Altitude: 16,000'
(lower altitude)		 23,000'
(higher altitude)
Nominal LVIS Swath Width: 0.9 km (180 mrad) 1.1 km (164 mrad)
Nominal Footprint Diameter: 6 m 8 m
LVIS Cameras
Camera Model: PhaseOne iXM-RS150F Canon EOS 5DS R
Lens Models: Rodenstock 180 mm Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar
T* 100mm f/2 ZE
Image Resolution: 150 Megapixels
14,204px x 10,652px		 50.3 Megapixels
5,792px x 8,688px
Nominal Resolution: 2.1 km x 1.4 km
(15 cm/px @ 23,000 ft)		 1.6 km x 1.1 km
(30 cm/px @ 23,000 ft)
Nominal Overlap: 67% 67%
Data Product: LVIS_CAM150MP LVIS_CAM050MP

Resources

Airports

  • KEFD - Ellington Field (Houston, TX, USA)
  • GVAC - Amílcar Cabral International Airport (Sal, Cape Verde)
  • FACT - Cape Town International Airport (Cape Town, South Africa)

Data Products

LVIS Data Products Format Download Location
Flight TrajectoriesKMZThis page
LVIS L1A Camera ImageryJPG*NASA EarthData, NSIDC1
LVIS Facility L1B Geolocated WaveformsHDF, LDS 2.0.5NASA EarthData, NSIDC1
LVIS Facility L2 Elevation and Height ProductsASCII TXT, LDS 2.0.5NASA EarthData, NSIDC1

1 At NSIDC, search for date ranges 01 Oct 2023 through 30 Nov 2023

View MJD Date Region / Remarks GPS Flight Trajectory L2 Gridded KMZs† Photo KMZs†
CAM150MP CAM050MP
60229 12 October 2023 Sensor calibration flight, Gulf of Mexico [kmz]
60233 16 October 2023 Houston, TX to Sal, Cape Verde [kmz]
60235 18 October 2023 Sal, Cape Verde to Cape Town, South Africa [kmz]
60237 20 October 2023 BioSCape Box 8, Cederberg [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz]
60239 22 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 2, 3 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60242 25 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 3, 10, 12, Algoa Bay [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60243 26 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 8, 9, 11, 12, 20, 21 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60245 28 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 1, 8, 15 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60246 29 October 2023 BioSCape Box 8, Cederberg [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60247 30 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 13, 6 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60248 31 October 2023 BioSCape Box 5 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60249 01 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 10, 12, 14 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60253 05 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 7, 14 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60256 08 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 7, 12, 18 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60257 09 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 1, 5, 13 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60258 10 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 10, 11 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60260 12 November 2023 BioSCape SF14 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60261 13 November 2023 BioSCape SF15 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz]
60263 15 November 2023 BioSCape Box 12 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
October/November 2023 All Flights [kmz]

*Preliminary LVIS Coverage locations are generated shortly after a flight and based on quicklook product information and are intended for general guidance only.
Key: Red=0%, Pink=1-10%, Orange=10-20%, Yellow=20-50%, Green=50-100%
†Warning: Gridded and Photo KMZ files are large and may take some time to load in Google Earth