Multispectral Orthomosaic Image for Upper Nome River (MP31) Beaver Ponds, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, 04 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; Nome; Seward Peninsula; Thermokarst; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A2X63B68F

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 a multispectral orthomosaic derived from drone surveys on 04 August 2021 at the Upper Nome River, MP31, site on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska. 1500 digital images from five spectral bands 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 25 hectares (ha). The drone system was flown at 120 meters (m) above ground level (agl) and images were captured using the hover and capture at point mode. 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. 4.6.4) using the standard 3D Maps workflow and the accurate geolocation and orientation calibration method to produce the multispectral orthophoto mosaic at a spatial resolution of 10 centimeters (cm). Images of a MicaSense calibrated reflectance panel were used for radiometric processing and calibration of each spectral band in the Index Calculator in Pix4D. 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.