Detection of change in surface water areas and in their geographic distribution on St. Lawrence Island [Amstislavski]

The major aim of this effort is to demonstrate the utility of integration of the remotely sensed imagery data, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors to detect the temporal and spatial changes in the geographic distribution and area of surface water. The current effort focuses on the coastal areas of St. Lawrence Island. As a Pacific Marine Arctic Regional Synthesis (PacMARS) data product it provides an example of how the implemented methodology can be applied to detect and map changes in coastal open water areas for the period of 2000 to present in all coastal area within the PacMARS study area, from Saint Lawrence Island and along the coastal shelf of the Bering, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

The current hydrological data set is for the years 2003 and 2012. It is useful in analyzing the change in the coastlines and coastal water bodies (lakes and streams), critical to the human activities related to the subsistence lifestyles on the Island. Note that we considered only the water surfaces showing an occurrency (i.e., number of water detections divided by the number of available observation) above 35% on an annual basis.