ABoVE: Vegetation Composition and Soil Data from Burned Alaskan Tundra Plots

July 2017 and July 2018 ecological field data from 43 plots on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska. The dataset includes vegetation species composition, structure, leaf area index, topography, thaw-depth, and soil characteristics from plots with varying fire histories. It was collected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and includes companion photographs of vegetation transects and soil pits.

Use Cases

• Modeling post-fire vegetation recovery trajectories based on species composition and soil data.
• Mapping plant functional type fractional cover based on any-hit cover metrics combined with Landsat imagery.
• Analyzing relationships between fire history, thaw depth, and vegetation structure.
• Comparing vegetation cover metrics (top-hit, any-hit, multi-hit) across different burn years.

Strengths

• Data from 43 plots provides spatial coverage across a fire history gradient.
• Includes companion files such as photographs of vegetation transects and soil pits.
• Covers multiple fire events (1971-1972, 1985, 2006-2007, 2015) and unburned controls.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Ecological field data collected using vegetation point-intercept (VPI) sampling along transects.

Time Range

July 2017, July 2018

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 19:51:38.630112; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Upland tundra of the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta, Alaska