Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/ABoVE_ForestDisturbance_Agents_1924
ABoVE_ForestDisturbance_Agents_1924·v1·dataset

What disturbed forests each year (Arctic, 1987-2012)

ABoVE: Landsat-derived Annual Disturbance Agents Across ABoVE Core Domain, 1987-2012
biosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 multiple
In plain English

What it measures. Year-by-year maps of what disturbed northern forests, fire, insects, or logging, across the Arctic-boreal region from 1987 to 2012, at 30-meter detail.

How it's made. Derived from a long time-series of Landsat images by detecting sudden changes in surface brightness, greenness, and wetness, then classifying the cause of each disturbance with a change-detection model.

How & where you'd use it. Helps ecologists and forest managers understand how and why northern forests change over time, important for studying carbon, wildfire, and ecosystem health in a warming Arctic.

What's measured

BIOSPHERE › ECOSYSTEMS › TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS › FORESTSBIOSPHERE › ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS › FIRE ECOLOGY › FIRE DISTURBANCELAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVER › LAND USE/LAND COVER CLASSIFICATIONBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › VEGETATION COVER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1985-01-01 → 2012-12-31
  • Measured byLANDSAT (ETM+) · LANDSAT-5 (TM)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-169.96, 50.259, -98.974, 75.6853
  • Formatsmultiple
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map vegetation, forests and biomass
  • Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
  • Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description

This dataset provides spatial data on disturbance agents of fire, insects, and logging in the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) core domain at an annual time step from 1987-2012 and 30 m resolution. Using a time-series of Landsat data, the three disturbance types were identified by abrupt changes in Tasseled Cap (dTC) indices of brightness, greenness, and wetness. Disturbances were detected by a Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) harmonic regression model applied to the time series. The dTC indices and disturbance results are provided.

Get the data

above_forestdisturbance_agents_1924_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ABoVE_ForestDisturbance_Agents_1924",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.