ABoVE: Wildland Fire Fuel Maps for Alaskan Tundra, 2015

Three 30-meter resolution maps detail the fractional cover of woody, herbaceous, and nonvascular fire fuels across Alaskan arctic tundra circa 2015. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration created these maps by combining multi-seasonal Landsat 8 satellite data from 2013-2017 with field observations from representative vegetation plots. An improved vegetation mask for shrub and graminoid-dominated tundra, developed using random forest classification, is also included.

Use Cases

• Modeling tundra wildfire risk and behavior based on mapped fuel type distributions.
• Studying changes in arctic vegetation composition based on fractional cover of shrubs, grasses, and mosses.
• Validating or improving other remote sensing land cover products for Alaskan tundra regions.
• Informing land management and climate change adaptation strategies in the Arctic.

Strengths

• 30-meter spatial resolution provides detailed landscape-level information.
• Integrates multi-seasonal Landsat 8 data from a five-year period (2013-2017) with ground-truthed field observations.
• Includes an improved vegetation mask developed using a random forest classification method.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to its focus on Alaskan tundra.
• The description does not specify the accuracy metrics or uncertainty estimates for the fractional cover models.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Fractional cover modeled by combining spectral information from Landsat 8 mosaics with field observations from vegetation plots.

Time Range

Circa 2015, with source Landsat data from 2013 to 2017.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:03:02.232156; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Alaskan arctic tundra