Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/SNEX20_TLI
SNEX20_TLI·v1·dataset

Time-lapse photos of a snow field site (2020)

SnowEx20 Time-Lapse Imagery V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level NA JPEG
In plain English

What it measures. Repeated time-lapse photos taken throughout the day at a snow research site, each including a tall painted pole as a reference marker for measuring snow depth.

How it's made. Collected by cameras placed at 29 sites around Grand Mesa, Colorado during the SnowEx 2020 field campaign, alongside other snow measurements.

How & where you'd use it. Used to track snow depth and conditions over time at the site; the snow-depth values derived from these photos are published separately.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE IMAGERY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-09-21 → 2020-08-18
  • Measured byGROUND-BASED OBSERVATIONS (CAMERAS)
  • Processing levelLevel NA
  • Spatial extent-108.216, 39.007, -107.934, 39.055
  • FormatsJPEG
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set contains sub-daily time-lapse images collected by cameras placed around Grand Mesa, CO at 29 sites coincident with other SnowEx 2020 measurements. The field view of all cameras includes a 3.049 m, (10 ft) vertical pole that was painted red with a yellow top to serve as a reference for quantifying snow depth. Snow depth data derived from these time-lapse images will be published separately at NSIDC.

Get the data

snex20_tli_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SNEX20_TLI",
    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.