Landsat Fractional Cover Estimates for Brazilian Amazon Ranches

Fractional cover estimates of photosynthetic vegetation, nonphotosynthetic vegetation, and exposed soil derived from Landsat imagery for two ranches in the Brazilian Amazon. The dataset contains six GeoTIFF files generated using spectral mixture analysis on 30-meter resolution images. It covers the period from 1996 to 2002 and is associated with the ORNL_CLOUD organization.

Use Cases

• Analyzing land cover change over time by comparing fractional cover estimates across the 1996-2002 period.
• Modeling pasture degradation and recovery using subpixel fractions of photosynthetic vegetation, nonphotosynthetic vegetation, and soil.
• Assessing the impact of logging and forest conversion by examining cover fractions across primary forest, logged forest, and pasture mosaics.
• Calibrating or validating regional-scale land cover models with high-resolution (30m) fractional cover data.
• Studying seasonal vegetation dynamics using the included end-of-wet-season image for the Nova Vida ranch.

Strengths

• Provides subpixel fractional cover estimates derived from a probabilistic spectral mixture analysis method.
• Offers high spatial resolution (30 meters) from Landsat imagery for detailed site analysis.
• Covers a multi-year time series (1996-2002) for observing temporal changes.
• Includes data from two distinct ranch sites in eastern Para and Rondonia, representing different Amazon regions.

Limitations

• Row and column counts are unknown; the dataset consists of six raster image files.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with one listing 2002-05-26 and others listing 2026-03 13.
• Spatial coverage is limited to two specific ranch sites rather than a broader regional analysis.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Spectral mixture analysis applied to subset Landsat images.

Time Range

1996 to 2002

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:11:45.397127

Geography

Two ranches in the Brazilian Amazon: Fazenda Vitoria in eastern Para and Fazenda Nova Vida in Rondonia.