Coastal Land-Cover and Barrier Island Features from Landsat, Northern Chandeleur Islands

Coastal land-cover and feature datasets were extracted from Landsat satellite imagery for the northern Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana. The data, created by Julie C. Bernier of the United States Geological Survey, includes water, bare earth, vegetated, and intertidal classes derived using spectral indices and thresholding. These datasets can be used to evaluate decadal-scale barrier landscape changes and were versioned in December 2025.

Use Cases

• Analyzing decadal-scale barrier landscape changes based on the description of evaluating long-term change.
• Mapping shoreline, sand, and vegetated extents based on the vector feature extraction method described.
• Calculating barrier platform, beach, and vegetated widths based on the transect intersection methodology.
• Studying the impact of tidal water-level variations on land-cover classification based on the image selection criteria.

Strengths

• Data derived from Landsat satellite imagery, a well-established remote sensing source.
• Processing accounts for tidal variations by selecting images within 2 hours of predicted low tide or on a rising tide below mean sea level.
• Includes multiple derived products: land-cover classes, vector shoreline/sand/vegetated extents, and calculated widths from transects spaced 300 meters apart.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description notes a change in processing algorithms between Landsat Collection 1 (1984-2019) and Collection 2 (2017-2024) products, which may affect consistency.

Provenance

Source

United States Geological Survey (USGS)

Collection Method

Derived from Landsat satellite imagery using successive thresholding and masking of spectral indices (mNDWI, NBLI, NDVI).

Time Range

Datasets derived from Landsat Collection 1 (1984-2019) and Collection 2 (2017-2024) products.

Freshness

The data release was versioned on December 19, 2025, but the specific last update date for the underlying data is unknown.

Geography

Northern Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana, USA, from Hewes Point to Palos Island.