Peace-Athabasca Delta Water Surface Elevation and Quality, 2006-2007

NASA-supported research collected water surface elevation and quality data at 120 sites within Canada's Peace-Athabasca Delta, a Ramsar and UNESCO World Heritage wetland, during the summers of 2006 and 2007. The dataset was created to study hydrologic recharge processes in low-relief environments and to provide ground-based validation for satellite observations of inundation and sediment transport. It consists of four comma-delimited ASCII files containing site location, measurement, and ancillary parameter data.

Use Cases

• Modeling hydrologic recharge processes in low-relief wetland environments based on water surface elevation measurements.
• Validating satellite observations of inundation extent and sediment transport using ground-based water quality and elevation data.
• Assessing seasonal water quality parameters across a large, ecologically significant delta during summer field campaigns.
• Analyzing spatial relationships between water surface elevation and ancillary parameters like conductivity and turbidity across 120 sites.

Strengths

• Covers a spatially extensive and ecologically significant area, with measurements from 120 sites within the Peace-Athabasca Delta.
• Provides ground-truth data specifically intended for validating satellite remote sensing products.
• Contains concurrent measurements of both physical (elevation) and chemical (water quality) parameters from the same field campaigns.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to two summer seasons (2006, 2007), lacking multi-year or year-round data.
• Specific column names and detailed data schema are not provided in the available metadata.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' metadata, with one source showing a future date (2026) and another showing the original collection period (2007).

Provenance

Source

Department of Geography, University of California-Los Angeles, supported by NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program (grant NNG06GE05G).

Collection Method

Field measurements collected at georeferenced sites throughout the delta.

Time Range

Summers 2006 and 2007.

Freshness

2007-09-10 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Peace-Athabasca Delta, northeastern Alberta, Canada, at the confluence of the Peace and Athabasca Rivers with Lake Athabasca.