Long-term C- and L-band SAR backscatter data for monitoring post-fire vegetation recovery in the tundra environment of the Anaktuvuk River, Alaska (Version 1.0) (2002-2017)-National Tibetan Plateau Data Center

Wildfires can strongly affect the frozen soil environment by burning surface vegetation and soil organic matter. Vegetation affected by fire can take many years to return to mature pre-fire levels. In this data set, the effects of fires on vegetation regrowth in a frozen-ground tundra environment in the Anaktuvuk River Basin on the North Slope of Alaska were studied by quantifying changes in C-band and L-band SAR backscatter data over 15 years (2002-2017). After the fire, the C- and L-band backscattering coefficients increased by 5.5 and 4.4 dB, respectively, in the severe fire area compared to the unburned area. Five years after the fire, the difference in C-band backscattering between the fire zone and the unburned zone decreased, indicating that the post-fire vegetation level had recovered to the level of the unburned zone. This long recovery time is longer than the 3-year recovery estimated from visible wavelength-based NDVI observations. In addition, after 10 years of vegetation recovery, the backscattering of the L-band in the severe fire zone remains approximately 2 dB higher than that of the unburned zone. This continued difference may be caused by an increase in surface roughness. Our analysis shows that long-term SAR backscattering data sets can quantify vegetation recovery after fire in an Arctic tundra environment and can also be used to supplement visible-wavelength observations.

The temporal coverage of the backscattering data is from 2002 to 2017, with a time resolution of one month, and the data cover the Anaktuvuk River area on the North Slope of Alaska. The spatial resolution is 30~100 m, the C- and L-band data are separated, and a GeoTIFF file is stored every month.

For details on the data, see SAR Backscattering Data of the Anaktuvuk River Basin on the North Slope of Alaska - Data Description.

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JIANG Liming. Long-term C- and L-band SAR backscatter data for monitoring post-fire vegetation recovery in the tundra environment of the Anaktuvuk River, Alaska (Version 1.0) (2002-2017). National Tibetan Plateau Data Center, 2018. doi: 10.11888/Ecolo.tpdc.270980. (Download the reference： RIS | Bibtex )

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