Day One: AVUELO’S First Tropical Survey

On February 6, 2025, after years of preparation and four months of intense planning, an aircraft with an advanced NASA instrument took off for the AVUELO campaign’s first survey in the tropics, while teams on the ground spread out to collect ground-truth data. The Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean (AVUELO) is a partnership between NASA, the Smithsonian Institution’s Tropical Research Institute, and the Costa Rican Fisheries Federation, as well as universities and institutes in the United States and Panama. 

AVUELO’s goal is to calibrate a new class of space-borne imagers for tropical vegetation and oceans research. These data will eventually help us understand how the thousands of tree species and marine organisms create unique ecosystems.

Day one, though, was a nail-biting, adrenaline-fueled day as we waited to see if plans for aircraft flights and the coordinated fieldwork would come together or whether the team would go back to the drawing board. Many members of the team had done similar projects in many regions, but each airborne project has its own unique features.

The weekend before, the teams had been thrilled to watch maps on the flight tracker as the twin-engine turboprop aircraft left California for Texas, then stopped in Mexico for fuel, and ultimately arrived in Panama. 

On January 6, after the teams arrived for the fieldwork, we had a preflight phone call and agreed on a plan. About 20 scientists collected and measured leaves, while other crews analyzed samples in the laboratory. The aircraft took off and began methodically collecting data over the core study area, a 25- by 50-mile block along the Panama Canal basin, which has dense rainforests, coastal mangroves, rivers, and lakes.

We watched on the flight tracker as the plane perfectly executed the planned flight, hoping for the weather we needed. We were thrilled as field teams returned with numerous successfully and arduously collected leaf samples. An hour or so after the aircraft landed, the team looked at previews of the imagery collected. Despite some clouds in the scenes, most of the key sites were clear, and with this data, the project was off to a successful start. The fieldwork will continue for another month as teams work to fully achieve AVUELO’s scientific objectives.

The day’s accomplishments were satisfying in a cool, calm scientific way, knowing we had started collecting the data that could transform our understanding of tropical forests, while knowing the road to get here was long. It was viscerally thrilling to have a successful first day after months of intense planning and challenges to overcome, which included coordinating arrivals from multiple universities and centers and organizing housing, safety plans, and communications between the aircraft aloft, crews on the ground, and boats in the ocean.

When the previews of the data appeared and we knew we had a successful first day, it was like a weight was being removed. It was time for a celebration!