Orthomosaic Image and Digital Surface Model for the Willow Creek Beaver Dams and Ponds, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, 10 August 2021

• Main Authors: Benjamin Jones, Kenneth Tape
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2023
• Subjects: arctic; beavers; alaska; tundra; pond; stream; permafrost; thermokarst; drone; Arctic; Beaver Ponds; Emergence of beavers as ecosystem engineers in the New Arctic; Seward Peninsula; Thermokarst; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A2KS6J62X

Emergence of beavers as ecosystem engineers in the New Arctic project focuses on establishing field sites at tundra beaver ponds to study the implications of beaver engineering on hydrology and permafrost. Drones are being used to collect baseline data and track beaver dam building and pond evolution over time. This dataset consists of an orthomosaic and digital surface model (DSM) derived from drone surveys on 10 August 2021 at the Willow Creek site on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska. 891 digital images were acquired from a DJI Phantom 4 Real-Time Kinematic (DJI P4RTK) quadcopter with a DJI D-RTK 2 Mobile Base Station. The mapped area was around 145 hectares (ha). The drone system was flown at 120 meters (m) above ground level (agl) and flight speeds varied from 8-9 meters/second (m/s). The orientation of the camera was set to 90 degrees (i.e. looking straight down). The along-track overlap and across-track overlap of the mission were set at 80% and 70%, respectively. All images were processed in the software Pix4D Mapper (v. 4.7.5) using the standard 3D Maps workflow and the accurate geolocation and orientation calibration method to produce the orthophoto mosaic and digital surface model at spatial resolutions of 5 and 10 centimeters (cm), respectively. Elevation information derived over waterbodies is noisy and does not represent the surface elevation of the feature. A Leica Viva differential global positioning system (GPS) provided ground control for the mission and the data were post-processed to WGS84 UTM Zone 3 North in Ellipsoid Heights (meters).