WorldView Satellite Land Cover and Snow Maps for Western U.S. Mountains

Two mountainous study sites in the Western U.S. provide fine-scale snow and land cover maps derived from Maxar WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 satellite images. The dataset includes binary snow maps and fractional snow-covered area (fSCA) maps at 30 m and 465 m resolutions, produced by the NSIDC_CPRD and released in 2019. Land cover maps classify features such as illuminated snow, shaded snow, vegetation, exposed surfaces, surface water, and clouds.

Use Cases

• Train machine learning models to classify land cover types like 'illuminated snow', 'shaded snow', and 'vegetation' from WorldView multispectral bands.
• Analyze spatial patterns of fractional snow-covered area (fSCA) by comparing the 30 m and 465 m resolution downsampled maps.
• Validate broader-scale snow products from Landsat and MODSCAG using the high-resolution binary snow maps.
• Study the relationship between terrain features and snow distribution using the land cover classes integral for stereo snow depth mapping.

Strengths

• Includes land cover classification maps with between three and six distinct classes common to mountainous regions.
• Provides data products at multiple spatial resolutions: fine-scale maps and downsampled 30 m and 465 m fSCA maps.
• Derived from high-resolution 8-band multispectral WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 satellite imagery.

Limitations

• Dataset is limited to only two study sites in the Western U.S., reducing geographic generalizability.
• Temporal coverage is not specified beyond the 2019 publication date, potentially limiting time-series analysis.
• Sample size (number of images or map tiles) is unknown, making it difficult to assess data volume.

Provenance

Source

NSIDC_CPRD, using Maxar WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 Level-1B multispectral images.

Collection Method

Machine-learning models trained to extract land cover data from orthorectified, top-of-atmosphere reflectance imagery; binary and fractional snow maps derived via downsampling.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Two mountainous study sites in the Western United States.