Study Domain for the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment

  • Released Friday, August 19, 2016
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This image shows the core region (red outline) and extended region (purple outline) of the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment over a background of the NDVI trend from 1983-2012.

This image shows the core region (red outline) and extended region (purple outline) of the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment over a background of the NDVI trend from 1983-2012.

Climate change in the Arctic and Boreal region is unfolding faster than anywhere else on Earth, resulting in reduced Arctic sea ice, thawing of permafrost soils, decomposition of long- frozen organic matter, widespread changes to lakes, rivers, coastlines, and alterations of ecosystem structure and function. NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program is conducting a major field campaign, the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), in Alaska and western Canada, for 8 to 10 years, starting in 2015. ABoVE seeks a better understanding of the vulnerability and resilience of ecosystems and society to this changing environment. The image shown here outlines the core region of the study domain in red and the extended region of the study domain in purple.

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.

The colorbar applied to the vegetation productivity trend data. Green colors indicate an increase while brown colors indicate a decrease.

The colorbar applied to the vegetation productivity trend data. Green colors indicate an increase while brown colors indicate a decrease.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Friday, August 19, 2016.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:48 PM EDT.

Related papers

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716300013

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716300013

Datasets used

  • Landsat NDVI Trend (1984–2012) [Landsat]

    ID: 934
    Dates used: 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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