Global Riverbank Erosion and Accretion from Twenty Years of Landsat Imagery

Twenty years of Landsat satellite imagery were used to create the first global dataset of riverbank erosion and accretion. The dataset was developed by Theodore Langhorst at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study risks from river modification and climate change. It aims to confirm existing geomorphological scaling relationships and open new research avenues.

Use Cases

• Modeling erosion risk to infrastructure based on global satellite-derived riverbank change data.
• Validating coarse geomorphological scaling relationships with detailed, long-term observational data.
• Analyzing the impact of damming and bank stabilization on river morphology over two decades.
• Investigating the effects of climate change and land use change on riverbank stability patterns.

Strengths

• First global dataset of its kind, providing a unique resource.
• Based on twenty years of Landsat satellite imagery, offering a long temporal perspective.
• Created to address a serious risk to people and infrastructure, indicating applied relevance.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Theodore Langhorst, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Collection Method

Analysis of Landsat satellite imagery over twenty years.

Time Range

Twenty years (specific years not provided).

Geography

Global