Study Domain for the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment
- Visualizations by:
- Cindy Starr
- View full credits
ABoVE’s science objectives are broadly focused on (1) gaining a better understanding of the vulnerability and resilience of Arctic and boreal ecosystems to environmental change in western North America, and (2) providing the scientific basis for informed decision-making to guide societal responses at local to international levels. Research for ABoVE will link field-based, process-level studies with geospatial data products derived from airborne and satellite sensors, providing a foundation for improving the analysis, and modeling capabilities needed to understand and predict ecosystem responses and societal implications.
The background shown over the study region is a spatially complete view of the vegetation greenness change for all of Canada and Alaska obtained by calculating per-pixel NDVI trend from all available 1984–2012 peak-summer Landsat-5 and -7 surface reflectance data, establishing the mid-Summer greenness trend. More information on this NDVI trend can be found here.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Visualizer
- Cindy Starr (GST) [Lead]
Designer
- David Stroud (UMBC)
Scientists
- Jeffrey Masek (NASA/GSFC)
- Junchang Ju (USRA)
- Peter Griffith (SSAI)
Project support
- Joycelyn Thomson Jones (NASA/GSFC)
- Leann Johnson (GST)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Data provider
- Eric Sokolowsky (GST)
Papers
This visualization is based on the following papers:Datasets used in this visualization
Landsat Landsat NDVI Trend (1984–2012)
This research used a nominal peak greenness period, July 1 to August 31, to accommodate tundra of all regions for Landsat data selection. We only considered the terrain-corrected scenes, excluding scenes that have cloud cover more than 80%. As a result, a total of 87,762 Landsat scenes over 1271 Path/Row locations were selected from 1984-2012. Of these, 63% were from Landsat-5, as Landsat-5 provided the only data source for 1984-1998 and continued to acquire data until 2011. This work aims to provide a spatially complete view of the vegetation greenness change for all of Canada and Alaska by calculating per-pixel NDVI trend from all available 1984-2012 peak-summer Landsat-5 and -7 surface reflectance data.
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