NASA Sentinel-2 Project: Glacier Surface Velocity Maps for Five Surge-Type Glaciers

Surface velocity estimates for selected Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glaciers, part of the NASA MEaSUREs program. Velocity fields were generated by tracking visible features in optical images from USGS Landsat 8 and ESA Copernicus Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites. The dataset includes velocity maps and error estimates for five specific surge-type glaciers located in Canada, the Pamir mountains, the Karakoram, Alaska, and Svalbard.

Use Cases

• Monitoring glacier flow dynamics based on satellite-derived surface velocity estimates.
• Studying surge-type glacier behavior based on data from five specific glaciers.
• Validating or improving ice flow models based on velocity maps and error estimates.
• Analyzing temporal changes in glacier motion based on imagery from multiple satellite platforms.

Strengths

• Data is part of the NASA MEaSUREs program, a formal Earth system data records initiative.
• Velocity fields are derived from multiple satellite sources: Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2A/B.
• Includes ancillary data such as stable surface masks and glacier outlines for each site.
• Generated using an improved pipeline (CautoRIFT) that incorporates daily high-resolution PlanetScope imagery.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program.

Collection Method

Velocity fields generated by tracking visible features in optical satellite imagery using the CautoRIFT pipeline.

Time Range

null

Freshness

unknown

Geography

Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glaciers and five specific surge-type glaciers in Canada, the Pamir mountains, the Karakoram, Alaska, and Svalbard.