Data and imagery associated with "Mapping scytonemin pigment content and biocrust function

Data from 2026 supports a study mapping scytonemin pigment content and biocrust functional indicators using high-resolution multispectral imagery. The repository contains processed raster products and a dataset of field measurements, pigment concentrations, and spectral indices from biological soil crusts in the Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico, and the Moab region, Utah. It was authored by Raúl Román and associated with a manuscript accepted for publication in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation.

Use Cases

• Training machine learning models to predict scytonemin pigment content based on spectral reflectance values and indices.
• Analyzing spatial distribution patterns of biocrust functional indicators using processed multispectral raster products.
• Comparing biocrust properties and spectral signatures under different environmental conditions (dry vs. wet) across two geographic regions.
• Developing and validating spectral indices for assessing nutrient concentrations and other functional indicators in biological soil crusts.

Strengths

• Includes data from two distinct geographic regions (Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico and Moab region, Utah) under both dry and wet conditions.
• Contains a specific dataset (database.xlsx) with field measurements, pigment concentrations, and spectral indices for model development.
• Provides a summary file (model_output_summary.xlsx) with machine learning model performance metrics for analyzed response variables.
• Data is associated with a peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication in 2026.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The repository size is listed as 0.0 B, indicating limited scope or potential metadata issue; actual data scale requires manual inspection after download.
• UAS-derived imagery for landscape-level scaling is not included in the repository and must be requested separately.

Provenance

Source

Raúl Román, via figshare.

Collection Method

Field measurements and high-resolution multispectral imagery collection from biological soil crusts.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-22 06:55:38.

Geography

Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico, USA and Moab region, Utah, USA.