NASA’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) has released new field and modeled datasets for the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) campaign. These include active layer soil properties measurements and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based multispectral imagery for Imnavait Creek; ground-based vegetation reflectance spectra; and UAV Visible and Near-Infrared (VNIR) imaging spectroscopy with plant functional type maps across multiple Arctic and boreal sites in Alaska.
Additional releases feature a 30-meter spatial resolution high-latitude forest vegetation height map derived from ICESat-2 and Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 (HLS) data, L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) prototype soil drainage maps for sites in Alaska and Canada, and Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM) simulations tracking historical northern high-latitude nitrous oxide emissions under baseline and permafrost-thaw conditions from 1969 to 2019.
ABoVE was a field campaign conducted in Alaska and western Canada for nearly ten years, starting in 2015. Researchers participating in ABoVE linked field-based, process-level studies with geospatial data products derived from airborne and satellite sensors. The work provided a foundation for improving the analysis and modeling capabilities needed to understand and predict ecosystem responses to, and societal implications of, climate change in the Arctic and boreal regions.
More information on these datasets and others like them can be found on the ABoVE project landing page.