South Alaskan ice-marginal lakes from Landsat 8 (2013-2019) via Google Earth Engine

• Main Authors: Anton Hengst, William Armstrong
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2021
• Subjects: Landsat; Optical Remote Sensing; Google Earth Engine; Land Cover Classification; Glacier; Ice-marginal Lake; Gulf of Alaska; Marginal Lake; glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A23R0PV3M

This dataset accompanies a manuscript submitted for review to the Journal of Remote Sensing. Lakes in direct contact with glaciers (ice-marginal lakes) are found across alpine and polar landscapes. As dynamic features that experience short-term (i.e., day to year) variations in area and volume, they form an important yet understudied element of the complete hydrologic system of glaciers with which they are in contact. To accelerate the study of ice-marginal lakes over large temporal and spatial extents, we automate the mapping of ice-marginal lakes by implementing a trained minimum-distance classifier of monthly Landsat 8 data products in Google Earth Engine. We produce maps of ice-marginal lakes in south Alaska for the summer months March through August for each year from 2013 through 2019. These maps are manually reviewed for accuracy. By spatially joining all maps, we can identify lakes throughout time, even if they are changing rapidly or dramatically. This dataset includes the spatial join of all lakes and shapefiles of each individual lake identified, grouped by lake. Within these lake shapefiles is illustrated an individual history of lake change; each feature is a delineation of the lake at a specific point in time.