Bringing Airborne and Field Data to Light

IMPACT’s Airborne Data Management Group (ADMG) works to make the vast stores of NASA airborne and field Earth observation data more discoverable for researchers and the general public. ADMG serves as a knowledge base for airborne and field, or “suborbital”, data users, producers, and stewards. The group supports many disciple-specific communities that rely on airborne and field observations to advance their science. ADMG also helps preserve NASA’s historical suborbital data facilitating transfer of the data to NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers, so they can be published and made accessible to the scientific community. Several previous blog posts dive more into the details of ADMG’s work (see below). This post focuses on two of the ADMG team members that make up ADMG.

Dr. Stephanie Wingo leads the development of CASEI, NASA’s Catalog of Archived Suborbital Earth Science Investigations. In this role, she guides and manages the ADMG curation staff and interfaces with the technical developers who design and update the CASEI website and its maintenance interface. Stephanie has a PhD in atmospheric science with years of research experience, one of the key data user communities served by NASA airborne capabilities. She also has experience using multi-sensor observations, that is data obtained by a wide variety of sensors on different platforms. Her area of research is weather phenomena, including hurricanes, severe weather and tornadoes, boundary layer meteorology, and precipitation processes.

Some of the project challenges Stephanie has faced have been expected, such as the intricate details of many field campaigns and the complexity of curating these metadata, but she enjoys learning more about the “other sides” of NASA data’s life cycle and using her skills to improve researchers’ ability to get and use data they need to make meaningful science progress.

"I’ve been the data user we are working to serve. I know from firsthand experience many of the frustrations and hurdles that NASA’s data users face when seeking observations to support their study of atmospheric phenomena. I’ve also been keenly aware of the ever-growing archive of data NASA has amassed over the decades, and I wanted to be part of enabling that record for modern and future use to address newly emerging science questions. I am always thinking of how NASA data infrastructure and policies can work better for researchers, with the goal of enabling more efficient and farther-reaching scientific return on NASA’s investment in collecting Earth observations."

Shelby Bagwell works on the metadata curation efforts for the CASEI inventory. This involves researching and verifying information about NASA’s field campaigns such as the platforms and instruments used. She also works with ADMG development team members to test updates to CASEI’s website and the team’s maintenance tool. The inventory that ADMG is building helps make NASA’s airborne and field data more findable and accessible. The rich metadata in CASEI allows users to quickly and easily sort through these campaigns to learn more and to find relevant data and information.

Shelby has a background in atmospheric and Earth science which gives her a familiarity with the topics covered by many of the campaigns on which ADMG collects metadata. She also has programming experience that increases her capability to effectively communicate with her fellow team members despite a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise.

"Working for ADMG has given me the opportunity to learn so much about NASA’s research efforts. In addition, I’ve found a passion for open science and ensuring that data is easily accessible for anyone. I love to learn, and this work with ADMG has allowed me to learn about so many different things. Because our inventory is for all of NASA’s suborbital field efforts, we come across campaigns that study a wide array of topics. Earth Science is a broad field, and I’ve enjoyed getting to see how all of it connects."

Shelby was also instrumental in taking the work ADMG is doing out of the laboratory and into the classroom. She and two other colleagues conducted an undergraduate seminar which provided Earth science students hands-on experience with airborne and field data.

See previous blog posts on this topic:

Improved Communication, Improved Management, Improved Data

Finding NASA’s Airborne Data: The Devil is in Gathering the Details

CASEI: A Discovery Catalog of NASA Airborne and Field Campaigns

More information about ADMG can be found at NASA Earthdata and the CASEI website.

More information about IMPACT can be found at NASA Earthdata and the IMPACT project website.

Check out LinkedIn profiles for Stephanie and Shelby.