The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collected low-altitude (typically 200-350 ft above land surface) airborne thermal infrared, and visual imagery data via a multirotor, small unoccupied aircraft system (UAS or ‘drone’) deployed along the river corridor encompassing two U.S. Geological Survey Next Generation Water Observing Systems (NGWOS) stream gage locations near Claryville, NY, USA. One site is the West Branch Neversink River at Claryville, NY (USGS station number 01434498) and the Neversink River at Claryville, NY (USGS station number 01435000). Beginning in summer 2019 these stations serve as groundwater/surface water instrumentation ‘test beds’ for the NGWOS program. Data collected at the sites include water electrical conductivity, level, and temperature in mapped groundwater discharge zones adjacent to the gage houses, soil moisture on the streambank, and a suite of supporting atmospheric data. Unmanned aviation system-based visible-light imagery data were collected from October 8-10, 2019 in .jpg format, and the images were compiled automatically into a larger stitched image (orthomosaic) using Agisoft Metashape (Agisoft LLC, St. Petersburg, Russia) software as described in the ‘processed_data’ subfolders of this data release. Structure from Motion techniques were also applied to the visual imagery to derive time-specific, digital surface models (DSM). In addition to the visible-light data, thermal infrared still images were collected in radiometric .tif format. Thermal data were compiled into orthomosaics and DSMs in a similar manner to visible light imagery.