Pamela Nagler Eduardo Jimenez-Hernandez Ibrahima Sall Armando Barreto-Muñoz Kamel Didan 20250131 tabular data Flagstaff, AZ U.S. Geological Survey Additional information about Originators: Nagler, Pamela L, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0674-103X; https://doi.org/10.5066/P13VMGER These data were compiled for monitoring riparian zone trends and changes in the Navajo Nation as part of a study to document riparian ecosystem health and its water use in support of potential restoration efforts. The objective of our study was to monitor the short and medium-term effects on the riparian vegetation in relation to evapotranspiration changes, drought, and other hydrological processes, along some critical riparian zones in the Navajo Nation. These data represent time series of vegetation greenness and water use for the years 2013 to 2023. These data were collected from the spaceborne mission Landsat 8 which carries the OLI (Operational Land Imager) and TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor) sensors for an area within the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. The specific regions of interest were focused on some Culturally Important Riparian Areas (CIRAS), including Buell Park/Black Creek Headwaters, Ganado/Pueblo Colorado Wash, Grand Falls, Oraibi Headwaters, Pasture Canyon, and Tappan Springs. Landsat data are collected and distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey. The acquired imagery was filtered for quality and reprocessed by the Vegetation Index and Phenology Lab at the University of Arizona, to generate vegetation indices and evapotranspiration trends for these riparian corridors. These data summarize the time series over the 11-year study. Three vegetation indices (VIs) are computed and reported: the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and the Two-Band Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI2). NDVI and EVI datasets were taken directly from Landsat products, EVI2 was calculated in the VIP Lab. Time series for daily Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa), in millimeters per day, were estimated from both EVI and EVI2 data using an ET empirical model (Nagler and others, 2013). These data can be used to study the trends in vegetation greenness, productivity, and water use, using VIs and ET respectively. These estimations can be linked to other variables or causes, and used to assess the effect climate change is having in this arid region in the period from 2013 to 2023. The purpose of these data tables are to provide estimates of the riparian vegetation health and water usage along reaches within the Navajo Nation, including Buell Park/Black Creek Headwaters, Ganado/Pueblo Colorado Wash, Grand Falls, Oraibi Headwaters, Pasture Canyon, and Tappan Springs between 2013 and 2023. These data were created to allow monitoring vegetation changes and water use trends, which can be useful for agricultural and environmental research. The data is intended to be easy to use by end users, such as land and water managers of the federal and tribal governments, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These data provide a unique time-series about water use along these corridors and as such support near-real time and long-term research focused on land cover vegetation health and water use along these riparian corridors. Lastly, these data also provide a (a short snapshot) reference about the status of these ecosystems. These data contain a reliable and representative values of VI or ET for each timestep, which correspond to the Landsat overpass of 16 days. All pixel values inside the Buell Park/Black Creek Headwaters, Ganado/Pueblo Colorado Wash, Grand Falls, Oraibi Headwaters, Pasture Canyon, and Tappan Springs areas were individually averaged into a single one, which sacrifices the spatial distribution of the values. However, the standard deviation can be used if necessary. It is recommended to use the VI and ET values as representative for each area and not as a fraction inside of it. All values are also representative for a period of 16 days (as described in Nagler and others, 2020), which means the 8-day period before and after the Landsat overpass had the same VI and ET value. Non-specialist should use the VI data as indicators of the vegetation growth and health in the context of the entire time series to observe the growth cycles through each year and to notice differences between years (e.g. to observe the peak values and its location in each year). Similarly, ET represents water consumption by plants represented in millimeters per day. These data do not represent the amount nor percentage of coverage of vegetation or plants per area or pixel. These data was derived from raster datasets with a spatial resolution of 30 m per pixel, the end user should consider if this is appropriate for their purposes. Data users should read the entire metadata record and acquire the manuscript identified as the ‘Larger Work Citation’ to have a complete understanding of how these data were created and used. These data are specific to the uses identified above, as described in the ‘Larger Work Citation’, and any other use of these data would be inappropriate. See 'Distribution liability' statements for more information. 20130105 20231231 ground condition Complete None planned -111.5675824 -108.9122388 36.5762762 35.2580963 USGS Thesaurus biogeography ecosystem monitoring evapotranspiration geospatial datasets image collections Landsat images land use change land use and land cover phenology precipitation (atmospheric) remediation remote sensing river ecosystems time series datasets vegetation water use wetland ecosystems USGS Metadata Identifier USGS:67902085d34e28977994d30c USGS information products data release ISO 19115 Topic Categories biota climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere environment geoscientificInformation imageryBaseMapsEarthCover inlandWaters None plant greenness seasonal trends Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) Arizona Black Creek Buell Park Ganado Wash Grand Falls Navajo Nation Oraibi Wash Pasture Canyon Pueblo Colorado Wash Tappan Spring Grand Falls None Black Creek Headwaters Oraibi Headwaters No access constraints No use constraints. License, Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal. Pamela L Nagler U.S. Geological Survey Research Physical Scientist mailing and physical

Mail Stop 9396, 520 North Park Avenue

Tucson AZ 85719 United States 520-670-3357 pnagler@usgs.gov Funding for these data products was provided by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Christopher J. Jarchow Kamel Didan Armando Barreto-Muñoz Pamela L. Nagler Edward P. Glenn 2018 MDPI (online) Sensors https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051546 Pamela L. Nagler Armando Barreto-Muñoz Sattar Chavoshi Borujeni Christopher J. Jarchow Martha M. Gómez-Sapiens Hamideh Nouri Stefanie M. Herrmann Kamel Didan 2020 Wiley Online Library Hydrological Processes https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13911 Pamela L. Nagler Edward P. Glenn Uyen Nguyen Russell L. Scott Tanya Doody 2013 MDPI (online) Remote Sensing https://doi.org/10.3390/rs5083849 The unique values for each attribute field were reviewed and checked for spelling, consistency of terms, accuracy, adherence to controlled vocabularies, and completeness. Attribute values in the data tables are within expected ranges. Range queries were conducted for each data tables to confirm that numerical values were not outside a reasonable range for a particular field. Outlier checks were performed by plotting numerical values bounded within a range (all data tables). Bounding dates were confirmed as correct. The DesignAreas2024 shapefile was reviewed with ArcGIS mapping software. Data set is considered complete for the information presented, as described in the abstract. Users are advised to read the rest of the metadata record carefully for additional details. US Geological Survey 2023 GeoTIFF raster dataset Sioux Falls, SD U.S. Geological Survey http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ digital raster data 20130105 20231231 ground condition 30-meter NDVI, EVI, and EVI2, Surface Reflectance and QA These EVI and EVI2 data were used to derive vegetation index based evapotranspiration data. The VI and QA information was used for all subsequent processing described above. ORNL DAAC, Daymet: Daily Surface Weather Data 2023 netCDF-4 Oak Ridge, TN Oak Ridge National Laboratory https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2129 digital netCDF-4 20130108 20231225 observed Daily observations 2013-2023 These daily temperature data were used to derive potential evapotranspiration data ET0. Data acquisition/creation: The raw Landsat images were acquired from U.S. Geological Survey (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/) including Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS C2 Level-2 digital raster data from 2013 to 2023 every 16 days. Additionally, we acquired DayMet daily weather data (Daily Surface Weather Data on a 1-km Grid for North America, Version 4 R1) in netCDF-4 data format from 2013-2023 (daily) from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2129). These datasets were resampled and projected to Albers Equal Area Conic projection and then tiled using the Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) tiling grid of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Both datasets were presented in raster format at a spatial resolution of 30 m. The Navajo Nation provided a polygon shapefile data layer for the six Culturally Important Riparian Areas (CIRAS) which were defined by the Navajo Nation as areas of interest for future restoration activities. Each polygon was used to extract vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI, and EVI2) and water use values (ETa estimated from both EVI and EVI2) from their corresponding raster data tile. The time series parameters are presented in tabular format with a date column representing the Landsat acquisition date, and additional columns for the average value (either VI or ET) of all Landsat pixels inside the area. 2024 Data processing of source data: NDVI and EVI were taken directly from the Landsat 8 raster data. EVI2 from 2013 to 2023 was computed in the VIP Lab. All VI data was stored as raster in HDF4 file format. Daily ETa data, in millimeters per day (mm/day), were also derived from EVI and EVI2 using an empirical model (Nagler and others, 2013) to capture vegetation water use over the entire year. The data processing workflow began with mosaicking (stitching) the Landsat scenes to create a larger contiguous area. The mosaic was projected to the Albers Equal Area Conic projection, then tiled using the Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) tiling grid format used by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Gridded meteorological data from DayMet was used to calculate potential evapotranspiration (ETo) using the Blaney-Criddle equation. The ETo values were then used together with EVI and EVI2 data to estimate actual evapotranspiration (ETa) values every 16 days from 2013 to 2023 for the riparian zones following an empirical model (Nagler and others, 2013). Actual evapotranspiration values derived from EVI and EVI2 were labeled as ET(EVI) and ET(EVI2) respectively. Each shapefile polygon outlining a CIRA site in the Navajo Nation were used to create a spatial mask that defines the data to be retained from their respective raster image tiles. This mask was used to extract all the Landsat pixels that fell in the CIRA site for each 16-day time step for the period from 2013 to 2023. Extracted data was summarized into separate tables, one for vegetation indices another for ET values. These tables were then combined and summarized to provide average estimates for each CIRA. The final data outputs consisted of tabular data of vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI, and EVI2) and actual evapotranspiration [ET(EVI) and ET(EVI2)] values (in mm/day). The data covers the period 2013 to 2023 in time steps of 16 days corresponding to the Landsat overpass. 2024 Development of the ET_EVIs_16days data table: Data processing for these data tables began with the extraction of daily actual evapotranspiration (ETa) derived from both EVI and EVI2, called ET(EVI) and ET(EVI2) respectively. Since ET was derived from the VIs it was generated at the same 16-day interval, which corresponds to the Landsat overpass dates. The generation of the time series for the Buell Park/Black Creek Headwaters, Ganado/Pueblo Colorado Wash, Grand Falls, Oraibi Headwaters, Pasture Canyon, and Tappan Springs used the respective CIRA polygon to mask and extract the data. The polygon for each CIRA was converted into a raster dataset and used as a mask over the ETa raster tiles. DayMet gridded weather data was used to derive potential Evapotranspiration (ETo), a measure of the maximum amount of water that could be evaporated from a vegetated surface under the given weather conditions. It represents the theoretical maximum water loss due to evaporation and transpiration. In the empirical model (Nagler and others, 2013) approach, the VI provides a measure of the crop or vegetation ability to evaporate water, similar to a crop coefficient. Using this approach, we can derive the ETa using VI and ETo, derived above. For each overpass date, the CIRA’s mask was used to extract and average ETa from all pixels in the mask. Each mask encompassed a varying number of Landsat pixels. To have a representative value, the values from all pixels were averaged into one per overpass date. This process generated the ET_EVIs_16days data tables, which includes a column for the overpass date and columns for ET(EVI) and ET(EVI2). 2024 Development of the VIs_16days data table: Data processing for this table began with the direct computation of EVI2 (which is not a standard product in the Landsat files) from surface reflectance. We then extracted all vegetation indices: NDVI, EVI, and EVI2 for all pixels in the site. The time series for each CIRA polygon was individually averaged from all the raster pixels that intersected the mask defined by the shapefile as described above. The polygon for each CIRA was converted into a raster dataset and used as a mask over the ETa raster tiles. Each mask encompassed a varying number of Landsat pixels. The values from all pixels were then averaged into a single value per overpass date. This process generated the VIs_16days data tables, which includes a column for the overpass date and columns for NDVI, EVI, and EVI2 values. 2024 Data Quality Assessment and Quality Control (QAQC): All Landsat product tiles include a Quality Assessment (QA) layer that describes the quality of each pixel. This QA information was then used to filter out pixels containing clouds, cloud shadow, high aerosols, and other atmospheric effects. The remaining pixel values were then averaged to create the time series. This may result at times in some bias associated with the changing number of retained pixels per processing date, however, we assumed this to be spatially and temporally consistent over the time period and as such we simply averaged whatever number of pixels resulting from the filtering process. Throughout the process of creating the VIs_16days and ET_EVIs_16days data tables, quality assessment and quality control measures were implemented to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data. This included thorough verification of the source data with the QA layer, checking the range of validity for the data: VI values were filtered to be within the range between -0.2 and 1 to include vegetation which has positive values, bare soil, and water pixels. The valid daily ET range was from 0.001 to 100 mm per day. All pixels outside these expected ranges were discarded and replaced by fill values. Landsat data also contains some special values such as NoData which were also filtered out from any processing. When averaging the data from the potential Landsat pixels for each CIRA polygon for each time step, other descriptive statistics such as minimum, maximum, standard deviation, and the number of pixels with valid data were also computed to help assess the overall processing pipeline performance. However, these intermediate values are not included in the data tables. 2024 Finalize Data for Dissemination: Data sent to the Southwest Biological Science Center Data Steward for dissemination and preservation per USGS Data Management Policies SM 502.6, SM 502.7, SM 502.8 and SM 502.9 (1 October 2016). 2025 BuellPark_ETa_EVIs_16days_2013-2023.csv to TappanSprings_ETa_EVIs_16days_2013-2023.csv These data represent daily average Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) data (every 16 days) computed from Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and the two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index 2 (EVI2) represented in millimeters per day. The reported values are the average of all the Landsat pixels that fall inside the area, for each time step. The purpose of these data tables are to present daily Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa), in millimeters per day, calculated from the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and the Two-Band Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI2) data from Landsat satellite images taken every 16 days. These data tables were generated from data gathered for each Culturally Important Riparian Area in the Navajo Nation, from 2013 to 2023. These data can be used to track long-term trends in daily water usage by riparian vegetation, using time-series data collected from the Landsat sensors. It provides insights into the long-term trends of riparian vegetation water use and is valuable for assessing the ecohydrology of the region. Producer defined YEAR This attribute in the data table represents the year of image data capture by the Landsat sensor. Producer defined 2013 2023 year DOY This attribute in the data table represents the day of the year of image data capture by the Landsat sensor. Producer defined 1 366 integer number DATE This attribute in the data table this attribute represents the date of image data capture by the Landsat sensor. Producer defined 1/5/2013 12/31/2023 date: month/day/year ETa_EVI This attribute in the data table represents Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) values using Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) values for the dates of image data capture by the Landsat sensor (acquired every 16-days). The Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) values are the amount of water lost from the soil and plants to the atmosphere over a period of time. Producer defined 0.151969 5.507133 millimeters per day ETa_EVI2 This attribute in the data table represents Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) values using Enhanced Vegetation Index 2 (EVI2) values for the dates of image data capture by the Landsat sensor (acquired every 16-days). The Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) values are the amount of water lost from the soil and plants to the atmosphere over a period of time. Producer defined 0.103336 5.678924 millimeters per day BuellPark_VIs_16days_2013-2023.csv to TappanSprings_VIs_16days_2013-2023.csv These data represent vegetation index data gathered from digitized riparian areas along the San Pedro River in the Lower Colorado River Basin, USA, from 2000 to 2023 and for every 16 days. The reported values are the average of all the Landsat pixels that fall inside the area, for each time step. The purpose of this data table is to present multi-day vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI, and EVI2) values from Landsat satellite images taken every 16 days. These data tables were generated from data gathered for each Culturally Important Riparian Area in the Navajo Nation, from 2013 to 2023. These data document long-term status and trends, based on time-series information obtained from Landsat sensors over the specified period. They offer valuable information on the health, productivity, and function of riparian vegetation and support the estimation of plant water use (actual evapotranspiration) along the riparian corridors. Producer defined YEAR This attribute in the data table represents the year of image data capture by the Landsat sensor. Producer defined 2013 2023 year DOY This attribute in the data table represents the day of the year of image data capture by the Landsat sensor. Producer defined 1 366 integer number DATE This attribute in the data table this attribute represents the date of image data capture by the Landsat sensor. Producer defined 1/5/2013 12/25/2023 date: month/day/year NDVI This attribute in the data table represents the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values for the dates of image data capture by the Landsat sensor (acquired every 16-days). Negative values: indicate non-vegetated areas. Low positive values (near 0): represent sparsely vegetated areas. Moderate positive values (0.2 - 0.5): indicate areas with moderate vegetation. High positive values (0.6 - 0.9): represent dense vegetation. Producer defined -0.00854388 0.459539648 unitless decimal number EVI This attribute in the data table represents the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) values for the dates of image data capture by the Landsat sensor (acquired every 16-days). Negative values: indicating non-vegetated areas. Values closer to 1 indicates denser, healthier vegetation. Values generally falling between 0.2 and 0.8 indicate a healthy vegetation range. Producer defined 0.000471656 0.321434546 unitless decimal number EVI2 This attribute in the data table represents the Enhanced Vegetation Index 2 (EVI2) values for the dates of image data capture by the Landsat sensor (acquired every 16-days). Higher positive values indicate more vegetation, while negative values indicate minimal vegetation. Essentially, a value closer to 1 signifies more robust vegetation, while a value closer to -1 represents very little to no vegetation. Producer defined 0.003637925 0.327412695 unitless decimal number GS ScienceBase U.S. Geological Survey mailing and physical

Denver Federal Center, Building 810, Mail Stop 302

Denver CO 80225 United States 1-888-275-8747 sciencebase@usgs.gov Unless otherwise stated, all data, metadata and related materials are considered to satisfy the quality standards relative to the purpose for which the data were collected. Although these data and associated metadata have been reviewed for accuracy and completeness and approved for release by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), no warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the display or utility of the data for other purposes, nor on all computer systems, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty. This file contains data available in comma-separated values (csv) format. The user must have software capable of displaying the data table. 20250131 Pamela L Nagler U.S. Geological Survey Research Physical Scientist mailing and physical

Mail Stop 9396, 520 North Park Avenue

Tucson AZ 85719 United States 520-670-3357 pnagler@usgs.gov Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata FGDC-STD-001-1998