ABoVE: Landsat tundra greenness and summer air temperatures, Arctic tundra biome, 1985-2016

• Main Authors: Berner, Logan T., Massey, Richard, Goetz, Scott J.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: NSF Arctic Data Center 2021
• Subjects: Primary Production; Photosynthesis; Alpine/Tundra; Plant Phenology; Vegetation Index; Growing Degree Days; Arctic; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a21z41t76; https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A21Z41T76

Rapid climate warming is impacting tundra ecosystems, but much remains unclear about the nature and extent of recent ecological change. This dataset provides information on annual tundra greenness and summer air temperatures from 1985 to 2016 across the Arctic tundra biome. Annual tundra greenness was assessed at about 50,000 random vegetated sampling sites using the annual maximum Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVImax) derived from surface reflectance measured by sensors on the Landsat satellites. Summer air temperatures were quantified using the Summer Warmth Index (SWI) derived from an ensemble of five global temperature datasets. This dataset includes tabular data on annual NDVImax and SWI from 1985 to 2016 for each sampling site in the Arctic tundra biome. The dataset also includes raster data quantifying (1) annual SWI from 1985 to 2016; (2) temporal trends in annual NDVImax and SWI from 1985 to 2016 and 2000 to 2016; and (3) temporal correlations between annual NDVImax – SWI during these two periods. These raster data span the Arctic tundra biome at a 50 km resolution. Each component of this dataset includes estimates of uncertainty that were generated using Monte Carlo simulations. The repository also includes all of the scripts developed for the analysis by Berner et al. (2020).