Arctic-Boreal Lake Area Timeseries from CubeSat Imagery, 2017

May 1 to October 1, 2017, this dataset provides near-daily lake area timeseries for 85,358 lakes across four Arctic-Boreal study areas in Northern Canada and Alaska. The area estimates were derived from high-resolution Planet Labs CubeSat imagery, capturing each lake's mean, minimum, and maximum area and seasonal dynamism. The dataset is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal lake area dynamics (expansion/contraction) using the derived mean, minimum, and maximum area values.
• Modeling surface water changes in Arctic-Boreal regions like the Yukon Flats Basin or Hudson Bay Lowland.
• Validating coarser-resolution satellite data against this high-spatial (3-5m) and high-temporal (near-daily) CubeSat-derived dataset.
• Studying the relationship between climate variables and lake area fluctuations across 85,358 individual lakes.

Strengths

• Covers a large sample of 85,358 lakes across four distinct Arctic-Boreal study regions.
• Provides near-daily temporal resolution from May to October 2017, capturing fine-scale seasonal dynamics.
• Derived from high spatial resolution (3-5m) Planet Labs CubeSat imagery with a 4-band camera payload.

Limitations

• Column names and exact row counts are not provided by any source, limiting detailed structural understanding.
• Conflicting last updated dates exist between platforms (2017-10-01 vs. 2026-03-12), creating uncertainty about metadata freshness.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' on datagov, requiring further investigation for reuse.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Lake area estimates derived from digital images captured by Planet Labs CubeSats.

Time Range

2017-05-01 to 2017-10-01

Freshness

2026-03-12 20:50:48.213204

Geography

Four Arctic-Boreal regions: Yukon Flats Basin (Alaska, USA), and Mackenzie River Valley, Canadian Shield Transect, and Hudson Bay Lowland (Canada).