Super-high-resolution aerial imagery, digital surface model and 3D point cloud of the Ikpikpuk Delta, Alaska

• Main Authors: Rettelbach, Tabea, Nitze, Ingmar, Grünberg, Inge, Hammar, Jennika, Schäffler, Simon, Hein, Daniel, Gessner, Matthias, Bucher, Tilman, Brauchle, Jörg, Hartmann, Jörg, Sachs, Torsten, Boike, Julia, Grosse, Guido
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA
• Subjects: AC; Airborne Data; Aircraft; Alaska; Arctic Landscape Dynamics; Barrow; USA; Binary Object; delta; Digital Surface Model; File content; MACS; Orthoimagery; P6_219_ThawTrendR_Air_2019; P6_219_ThawTrendR_Air_2019_1907311201; Permafrost; Point cloud; LAS file; point clouds; POLAR 6; Project; Raster graphic; GeoTIFF format; Structure-from-Motion; US-Air_2019_AK_NorthSlope; ThawTrendr-Air; AIRMETH; Alfred Wegener Institute; Arctic; permafrost; Thermokarst
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.962582

As part of the ThawTrend-Air airborne campaign led by the Alfred Wegener Institute in 2019, we collected super-high-resolution multispectral imagery of permafrost landscapes with the Modular Aerial Camera System (MACS), developed by the German Aerospace Center. From these images, we photogrammetrically processed four-band orthophotos (blue, green, red, near-infrared) and digital surface models at a spatial resolution of 7 cm, as well as photogrammetric point clouds in RGB and NIR at 22.73 pts/m² and 8.83 pts/m², respectively. This dataset covers approximately 14.16 km² of the Ikpikpuk Delta in Alaska, with all images collected on 31 July 2019. This super-high-resolution dataset provides opportunities for generating detailed training datasets of permafrost landform inventories, a baseline for change detection for thermokarst and thermo-erosion processes, and upscaling of field measurements to lower-resolution satellite observations.