Calibration system stability plans for a long-term Ecological Airborne remote sensing project

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) will fly an imaging spectrometer, small footprint waveform LiDAR and high-resolution digital camera to observe both the human drivers of climate change and the biological consequences of environmental change at a continental scale. The project is planned for a 30-year period. To be meaningful as an ecological climate data record, the AOP data set must have a continuous and consistent calibration effort. This paper briefly describes plans for the development of a robust calibration and validation plan to ensure data continuity from instrument-to-instrument, flight-to-flight, and year-toyear over the lifetime of the NEON project.