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Full catalog/Decadal_Water_Maps_1324
Decadal_Water_Maps_1324·v1.1·dataset

How surface water changed across the Arctic (1991-2011)

ABoVE: Surface Water Extent, Boreal and Tundra Regions, North America, 1991-2011
hydrosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Maps showing where open surface water (lakes, rivers, ponds, not vegetated wetlands) sat across the boreal and tundra regions of North America, for three time snapshots centered on 1991, 2001, and 2011.

How it's made. Derived at 30 m resolution from years of ice-free Landsat 4, 5, and 7 imagery covering Alaska and all of Canada.

How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers see how Arctic and sub-Arctic surface water changed over two decades, relevant to permafrost thaw, wetlands, and northern climate studies.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › TOTAL SURFACE WATERLAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVER › LAND USE/LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1990-01-01 → 2012-12-31
  • Measured byLANDSAT-4 (TM) · LANDSAT-5 (TM) · LANDSAT-7 (ETM+)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-177.475, 41.7039, -53.9393, 82.3729
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
  • Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
  • Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description

This data set provides the location and extent of surface water (open water not including vegetated wetlands) for the entire Boreal and Tundra regions of North America for three epochs, centered on 1991, 2001, and 2011. Each of the products were generated with at least three years of ice-free Landsat imagery. The data are at 30-m resolution and were derived from time series of Landsat 4 and 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) covering all of Alaska and all provinces of Canada. The overall goal was to generate a map of the nominal extent of water for a given epoch, where nominal is neither the maximum nor the minimum but rather a representative extent for that time period.

Get the data

decadal_water_maps_1324_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="Decadal_Water_Maps_1324",
    version="1.1",
    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.