Digital orthophotos acquired during a tracer experiment on the Missouri River near Lexington, MO, on May 11, 2024

This data release includes digital orthophotos acquired during a tracer experiment performed on the Missouri River near Lexington, Missouri, on May 11, 2024. The orthophotos were acquired from a fixed-wing crewed aircraft and are provided as background images. One of the primary goals of this study was to assess the feasibility of inferring concentrations of a visible dye (Rhodamine WT) in a large, highly turbid natural river channel using data from a Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS)-based hyperspectral imaging system. Previous research on remote sensing of tracer dye concentrations demonstrated the ability to obtain moderately precise concentration estimates from standard red-green-blue (RGB) video and orthophotos and this experiment allowed us to evaluate the hypothesis that more detailed spectral information could enable concentrations to be inferred with greater accuracy and precision. The broader objective motivating tracer studies along the Missouri River is to gain insight regarding the dispersion processes that influence the movement and survival of endangered sturgeon larvae. This data release provides access to two digital orthophotos acquired from a fixed-wing crewed aircraft to support this experiment: 1. A reach-scale mosaic that shows the dye pulse shortly after injection into the river and provides context for the study and the various data sets acquired during the experiment. 2. A higher-resolution orthophoto focused on the area where hyperspectral image transects were obtained, provided to serve as a background reference image for the other data sets. Please refer to the metadata file for further detail about each data set. Overall, these data were used to assess the potential for estimating tracer dye concentrations in turbid rivers from UAS-based hyperspectral image data.

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  "010:12"
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  "geospatial"
]