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Full catalog/Erosion_Vegetation_Yukon_1616
Erosion_Vegetation_Yukon_1616·v1·dataset

How a Yukon riverbank eroded and regrew (1984-2017)

ABoVE: Riverbank Erosion and Vegetation Changes, Yukon River Basin, Alaska, 1984-2017
biosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 multiple
In plain English

What it measures. A time series showing how riverbanks eroded and where vegetation grew back along stretches of the Yukon and nearby Alaskan rivers from 1984 to 2017.

How it's made. Derived from 30 m Landsat surface-reflectance images, using a greenness index to separate vegetated from bare ground and detecting changes between multi-year time intervals.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers study river dynamics, bank erosion, and plant recovery in interior Alaska over more than three decades.

What's measured

BIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › VEGETATION INDEX › NORMALIZED DIFFERENCE VEGETATION INDEX (NDVI)LAND SURFACE › LANDSCAPE › RECLAMATION/REVEGETATION/RESTORATIONBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › RECLAMATION/REVEGETATION/RESTORATIONLAND SURFACE › EROSION/SEDIMENTATION › EROSION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1984-01-01 → 2017-12-31
  • Measured byLANDSAT-5 (TM) · LANDSAT-7 (ETM+) · LANDSAT-8 (OLI)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-161.459, 61.9076, -143.305, 68.1463
  • 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 a time series of riverbank erosion and vegetation colonization along reaches of the Yukon River (3 study areas), Tanana and Nenana Rivers (1 area), and Chandalar River (1 area) in interior Alaska over the period 1984-2017. The change data were derived from selected 30-m images from Landsat TM, Landsat ETM+, and Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) surface reflectance products. Image classification used the Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI) with an NDVI threshold of 0.2 to differentiate vegetated from non-vegetated pixels. Images were assigned to one of seven or eight multiyear intervals, within the 1984-2017 overall range, for each study area. Time intervals vary by study site. Change detection identified shifts from one time interval to the next: changes from vegetated to non-vegetated classes were considered riverbank erosion and changes from non-vegetated to vegetated classes were considered vegetation colonization.

Get the data

erosion_vegetation_yukon_1616_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="Erosion_Vegetation_Yukon_1616",
    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.