Land cover classification and mapping of a polar desert in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago ...

• Main Authors: Desjardins, Émilie, Lai, Sandra, Houle, Laurent, Caron, Alain, Thériault, Véronique, Tam, Andrew, Vézina, François, Berteaux, Dominique
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2023
• Subjects: Remote sensing; Satellite image; predictor selection; majority voting; ensemble model; Snow; vegetation; water; FOS Other natural sciences; Arctic; Berteaux; Canada; Canadian Arctic Archipelago; Canadian Forces Station Alert; Caron; Ellesmere Island; Houle; Nunavut; Arctic Archipelago; Climate change; polar desert
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3bk3j9kpk; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.3bk3j9kpk

The use of remote sensing for developing land cover maps in the Arctic has grown considerably in the last two decades, especially for monitoring the effects of climate change. The main challenge is to link information extracted from satellite imagery to ground covers due to the fine-scale spatial heterogeneity of Arctic ecosystems. There is currently no commonly accepted methodological scheme for high-latitude land cover mapping, but the use of remote sensing in Arctic ecosystem mapping would benefit from a coordinated sharing of lessons learned and best practices. Here, we aimed to produce a highly accurate land cover map of the surroundings of the Canadian Forces Station Alert, a polar desert on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island (Nunavut, Canada) by testing different predictors and classifiers. To account for the effect of the bare soil background and water limitations that are omnipresent at these latitudes, we included as predictors soil-adjusted vegetation indices and several hydrological ... : The methodology and the land cover classes are described in the related works: Émilie Desjardins, Sandra Lai, Laurent Houle, Alain Caron, Véronique Thériault, Andrew Tam, François Vézina & Dominique Berteaux (2023) Algorithms and Predictors for Land Cover Classification of Polar Deserts: A Case Study Highlighting Challenges and Recommendations for Future Applications. Remote Sensing, 15:12, 3090, DOI: 10.3390/rs15123090 Émilie Desjardins, Sandra Lai, Serge Payette, François Vézina, Andrew Tam & Dominique Berteaux (2021) Vascular plant communities in the polar desert of Alert (Ellesmere Island, Canada): Establishment of a baseline reference for the 21st century, Écoscience, 28:3-4, 243-267, DOI: 10.1080/11956860.2021.1907974 ...