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Full catalog/Frac_FuelComponent_Maps_Tundra_1761
Frac_FuelComponent_Maps_Tundra_1761·v1·dataset

Maps of what can fuel tundra wildfires (Alaska, 2015)

ABoVE: Distribution Maps of Wildland Fire Fuel Components across Alaskan Tundra, 2015
biosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Maps showing, for each 30-meter patch of Alaskan tundra around 2015, how much of three wildfire fuel types is present: woody shrubs, grasses and sedges, and mosses and lichens. A vegetation mask separating shrub from grassy tundra is also included.

How it's made. Built by combining multi-season Landsat 8 satellite imagery with field observations from tundra plots, then using a machine-learning model to estimate the fraction of each fuel type.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers and fire managers understand what can burn across the Alaskan tundra, supporting wildfire risk assessment and modeling in the far north.

What's measured

BIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › BIOMASSBIOSPHERE › ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS › FIRE ECOLOGYLAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVER › LAND RESOURCESBIOSPHERE › ECOSYSTEMS › TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS › ALPINE/TUNDRA

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2013-01-01 → 2017-12-31
  • Measured byLANDSAT-8 (OLI)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-170.006, 57.3911, -132.487, 72.5229
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • 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 maps of the distribution of three major wildland fire fuel types at 30 m spatial resolution covering the Alaskan arctic tundra, circa 2015. The three fuel components include woody (evergreen and deciduous shrubs), herbaceous (sedges and grasses), and nonvascular species (mosses and lichens). Multi-seasonal and multispectral mosaics were first developed at 30 m resolution using Landsat 8 surface reflectance data collected from 2013 to 2017. The spectral information from Landsat mosaics was combined with field observations from representative tundra vegetation plots collected during multiple field trips to model the fractional cover of fuel type components. An improved vegetation mask for shrub and graminoid-dominated tundra was developed using random forest classification and is also included. The final fractional cover maps were developed using the trained model with the multi-seasonal and multi-spectral Landsat mosaics across the entire Alaskan tundra.

Get the data

frac_fuelcomponent_maps_tundra_1761_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="Frac_FuelComponent_Maps_Tundra_1761",
    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.