U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

icon-dot-gov

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

icon-https

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Temporal and Spatio-Temporal High-Resolution Satellite Data for the Validation of a Landsat Time-Series of Fractional Component Cover Across Western United States (U.S.) Rangelands

Western U.S. rangelands have been quantified as six fractional cover (0-100%) components over the Landsat archive (1985-2018) at 30-m resolution, termed the “Back-in-Time” (BIT) dataset. Robust validation through space and time is needed to quantify product accuracy. We leverage field data observed concurrently with HRS imagery over multiple years and locations in the Western U.S. to dramatically expand the spatial extent and sample size of validation analysis relative to a direct comparison to field observations and to previous work. We compare HRS and BIT data in the corresponding space and time. Our objectives were to evaluate the temporal and spatio-temporal relationships between HRS and BIT data, and to compare their response to spatio-temporal variation in climate. We hypothesize that strong temporal and spatio-temporal relationships will exist between HRS and BIT data and that they will exhibit similar climate response. We evaluated a total of 42 HRS sites across the western U.S. with 32 sites in Wyoming, and 5 sites each in Nevada and Montana. HRS sites span a broad range of vegetation, biophysical, climatic, and disturbance regimes. Our HRS sites were strategically located to collectively capture the range of biophysical conditions within a region. Field data were used to train 2-m predictions of fractional component cover at each HRS site and year. The 2-m predictions were degraded to 30-m, and some were used to train regional Landsat-scale, 30-m, “base” maps of fractional component cover representing circa 2016 conditions. A Landsat-imagery time-series spanning 1985-2018, excluding 2012, was analyzed for change through time. Pixels and times identified as changed from the base were trained using the base fractional component cover from the pixels identified as unchanged. Changed pixels were labeled with the updated predictions, while the base was maintained in the unchanged pixels. The resulting BIT suite includes the fractional cover of the six components described above for 1985-2018. We compare the two datasets, HRS and BIT, in space and time. Two tabular data presented here correspond to a temporal and spatio-temporal validation of the BIT data. First, the temporal data are HRS and BIT component cover and climate variable means by site by year. Second, the spatio-temporal data are HRS and BIT component cover and associated climate variables at individual pixels in a site-year.

Get Data and Metadata
Author(s) Matthew B Rigge orcid, Collin Homer orcid, Debra K. Meyer, Hua Shi (CTR) orcid
Publication Date 2019-12-18
Beginning Date of Data 1985
Ending Date of Data 2018
Data Contact
DOI https://doi.org/10.5066/P90Q8BCP
Citation Rigge, M.B., Homer, C., Meyer, D.K., and (CTR), H.S., 2019, Temporal and Spatio-Temporal High-Resolution Satellite Data for the Validation of a Landsat Time-Series of Fractional Component Cover Across Western United States (U.S.) Rangelands: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P90Q8BCP.
Metadata Contact
Metadata Date 2020-08-18
Related Publication
Citations of these data

Loading https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11243009

Access public
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Loading...
Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2021-11-19T04:42:53.907Z