Characteristics of aufeis in the Kolyma River basin derived from Landsat images (2013-2017)

• Main Authors: Makarieva, Olga, Shikhov, Andrey, Ostashov, Andrey, Nesterova, Nataliia
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2020
• Subjects: Aster GDEM; aufeis; Aufeis area; Comment; DATE/TIME; ELEVATION; Identification; Kolyma_area; Landsat; LATITUDE; LONGITUDE; LSAT; MULT; Multiple investigations; Reference/source; Remote sensing (Landsat); Russia; the Kolyma River; kolyma river
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.925405; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.925405

Present-day aufeis dataset was created by Landsat-8 OLI images for the period 2013-2019. Each aufeis was delineated by satellite images as polygon. Cloud-free Landsat images are obtained immediately after snowmelt season (e.g. between May, 17 and June, 16), to detect the highest possible number of aufeis. Critical values of Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) were used for semi-automated aufeis detection. However, a detailed expert-based verification was performed after automated procedure, to distinguish snow-covered areas from aufeis and cross-reference historical and satellite-based data collections. According to Landsat data, the number of aufeis reaches 2216, with their total area about 879.7 km2. The difference between the Cadastre (1958) and the satellite-derived data may indicate significant changes of aufeis formation environments.