SWAN Snipe Lake Soil Active Layer Measurements for 2017

2017 data collected to identify the seasonal soil active layer at the Snipe Lake weather station in Southwest Alaska. The active layer is the top soil that thaws and refreezes seasonally, serving as a key indicator for climate and carbon cycle dynamics. These measurements were made coincidentally with NASA's ABoVE airborne microwave data acquisitions.

Use Cases

• Modeling seasonal permafrost thaw dynamics based on active layer depth measurements.
• Validating airborne L and P band microwave remote sensing data from the NASA ABoVE campaign.
• Analyzing the relationship between soil temperature and active layer thickness for climate indicator studies.
• Studying carbon cycle dynamics in Arctic ecosystems based on soil active layer data.

Strengths

• Data is temporally aligned with NASA ABoVE airborne acquisitions, enabling direct validation.
• Focuses on the soil active layer, a key climate variable for Arctic ecosystems.
• Last metadata update was recorded as 2026-03-19.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Department of the Interior

Collection Method

Field measurements collected at the Snipe Lake weather observation station.

Time Range

2017

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-19 03:35:17.834946; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Snipe Lake, Southwest Alaska