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Full catalog/NSIDC-0796
NSIDC-0796·v1·dataset

Where glaciers and locked-in sea ice sit in Greenland fjords

Glacial and Fast Ice Distributions in Southeast Greenland Fjords V001
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 4 ShapefileCSVGeoPackage
In plain English

What it measures. Hand-drawn maps showing where glacial ice and 'fast ice' (sea ice locked in place against the shore) sit within eight fjords along Southeast Greenland's coast, with the glacial ice sorted by how dense and iceberg-filled it is.

How it's made. People manually traced the ice boundaries in mapping software using Landsat-8, MODIS, Sentinel-1, and Sentinel-2 satellite images, so coverage is patchy depending on which clear images existed.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers study how ice forms, jams, and breaks up in Greenland's fjords, which matters for understanding glacier behavior and coastal change.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › FAST ICELAND SURFACE › GEOMORPHIC LANDFORMS/PROCESSES › GLACIAL LANDFORMS › FJORDSCRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-01-01 → 2019-12-31
  • Measured byAqua (MODIS) · LANDSAT-8 (OLI) · Sentinel-1A (C-SAR) · Sentinel-1B (C-SAR) · Sentinel-2A (Sentinel-2 MSI) · Sentinel-2B (Sentinel-2 MSI) · Terra (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-44.19918, 60.28688, -22.41052, 70.00996
  • FormatsShapefile, CSV, GeoPackage
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
  • Watch ice-sheet elevation change
  • Track freeze/thaw and permafrost
Official description

This data set provides spatial distributions of fast ice and glacial ice in eight fjords spanning the Southeast Greenland coast: Nansen, Kangerlusruaq, Ikertivaq, Skjoldungen, Tingmiarmiut, Napasorsvaq, Anoritup, and Kangerlluluk. Temporal coverage is discontinuous, depending on the availability and quality of images. Fjord data were sourced from USGS EarthExplorer, Copernicus Open Access Hub, and the NSIDC. Landsat-8 and MODIS imagery for ice identification were collected from NASA Worldview and USGS EarthExplorer. Fjord, fast ice, and glacial ice boundaries were manually delineated using ArcGIS. Glacial ice was further categorized as dense glacial melange (Type 3), substantial glacial ice with large icebergs (Type 2), low-density glacial ice with large icebergs (Type 1), consistent small ice surface without large icebergs (Type 0), or glacier surface (Type 99).

Get the data

nsidc-0796_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0796",
    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 NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.