The ORNL DAAC is pleased to announce the release of Water Quality and Spectral Reflectance, Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada, 2010 - 2011 , prepared by Colleen Long and Tamlin Pavelsky.
This data set includes water quality and site characteristics data for June and July 2010 and June and July 2011, and spectral reflectance of the water surface for 2011. Data were originally collected to study the spatial transferability of models that relate suspended sediment concentration to remotely sensed water surface reflectance, and to further understand changes in hydrologic recharge in the Peace-Athabasca Delta.
The Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD) is a hydrologically complex and ecologically diverse freshwater delta formed by the confluence of the Peace, Athabasca, and Birch Rivers near the western end of Lake Athabasca, Alberta, Canada. The three intersecting river deltas cover ~5,200 km2, making the PAD one of the world’s largest freshwater deltas. It has been named a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site and a Ramsar Convention Wetland of International Importance because of its biological significance and role as the largest alluvial-wetland habitat in the region. A large portion of the delta (~80%) is protected within Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.
This data set compliments another data set of surface water elevation and quality collected in the PAD during the summers of 2006 and 2007. The Surface Water Elevation and Quality, Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada, 2006-2007 data are archived and accessible at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center and contain some of the same measurements in the same locations provided here.
The ORNL DAAC is a NASA-funded data center archiving and distributing terrestrial ecology and biogeochemical dynamics data.