ORNL DAAC Data Release: ABoVE Datasets describing Ice Fraction, Environmental Data, & Biomass Density

[ORNL - blancohl]

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) released a series of new datasets for the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) project recently.

The Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) is a NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program field campaign based in Alaska and western Canada between 2016 and 2025. Research for ABoVE links field-based, process-level studies with geospatial data products derived from airborne and satellite sensors, providing a foundation for improving the analysis and modeling capabilities needed to understand and predict ecosystem responses and societal implications.

ABoVE: Ice Fraction of Small Water Bodies in the Arctic Coastal Plain, 2017-2023
This dataset contains ice fraction data at 1-km spatial resolution and approximately 6-day temporal resolution for small water bodies (900 m2 to 25 km2) across the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska (ACP) from 2017 to 2023. The data were developed using Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery, texture features, and temperature data. Ice fraction is summarized for 1-km grid cells. Ice cover of water bodies in the northern high latitudes (NHL) is highly sensitive to the changing climate, and its dynamics exert substantial impacts on the NHL ecosystems, hydrological processes, and carbon cycle. Compared with the Google Dynamic World (DW) product derived from Sentinel-2 observations, this dataset shows high consistency with DW (R =0.91, RMSE = 0.19) while having enhanced temporal coverage due to fewer constraints from solar illumination, cloud cover, and atmospheric conditions.

ABoVE: Land Cover, Methane Fluxe, and Environmental Data, Big Trail Lake, Fairbanks, AK
This dataset provides field data and gridded land cover and terrain data for an area north of Big Trail Lake, an active thermokarst lake in Goldstream Valley (near Fairbanks, Alaska, USA). Field samples were collected at 56 locations across the study area in June 2021 and August 2022. Field data include chamber-based methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) flux, soil moisture, soil temperature, soil pH, vegetation communities, meteorological data, and soil samples. The soil samples were used to conduct SIMPER microbial community analysis and soil chemical analyses and to quantify methanogen and methanotroph relative abundance. Land cover classifications (10 cm spatial resolution) were derived from supervised random forest classifications using RedEdge-MX and multiSPEC-4C multispectral drone imagery, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) digital surface model (DSM) data. RedEdge-MX drone imagery was collected in July 2021 and multiSPEC-4C drone imagery was collected in August 2019. Gridded microtopography and slope estimates were derived at 1- m spatial resolution using USGS 3DEP digital terrain model (DTM) data. Gridded products are provided in cloud-optimized GeoTIFF format, field data are provided in comma-separated values format, and sample location photos in JPEG format are contained within a compressed file.

Circumpolar Boreal Forest Aboveground Biomass Density and Vegetation Height, V3
This dataset provides estimates of aboveground dry woody biomass density (AGBD) and vegetation height for high northern latitude forests at a 30-m spatial resolution for the year 2020, accounting for >30% of global forest area. The estimates were derived with state-of-the-art earth observation datasets collected from space, including lidar observations from NASA's ICESat-2 and imagery from NASA's Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 project. They are designed for circumpolar boreal-wide mapping from local to global scales and provide the northern component of global forest structure estimates, to which complementary estimates from NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission contribute temperate and tropical portions. The AGBD and height predictions cover the extent of high latitude boreal forests and shrublands. While they extend southward outside the boreal domain nominally to ~50 degrees N, they are intended to contribute to global estimates northward from 51.6 degrees N.

More information about these datasets and the project can be found on the NASA Earthdata ABoVE project page.

Citations:
Lin, H., Du, J., & Kimball, J. S. (2026). ABoVE: Ice Fraction of Small Water Bodies in the Arctic Coastal Plain, 2017-2023 (Version 1). ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2451

Farina, M. K., Christian, W., Watts, J. D., Mcdermott, T., Hatzenpichler, R., Larue, G., Powell, S., Webb, H., Barnes, N., & Okano, K. (2026). ABoVE: Land Cover, Methane Flux, and Environmental Data, Big Trail Lake, Fairbanks AK (Version 1). ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2393

Montesano, P. M., Duncanson, L., Zarringhalam, A., Minor, D., Neuenschwander, A., Guenther, E., & Thomas, N. (2025). Circumpolar Boreal Forest Aboveground Biomass Density and Vegetation Height, V3 (Version 3). ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2437