Date (Creation)

2023-06-01

Date (Revision)

2023-06-01

Date (Publication)

2023-06-01

Date (released)

2023-06-01

Edition

1.0

Unique resource identifier

https://doi.org/10.5285/d6721952-a9ab-4021-adc6-1ccb4d52f1f9

Codespace

doi

Unique resource identifier

GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01745

Codespace

https://data.bas.ac.uk/

Unique resource identifier

NE/S007458/1

Codespace

award

Other citation details

Please cite this item as: Stringer, C. (2025). 21st century land cover change across the major proglacial regions of West Antarctica and the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/d6721952-a9ab-4021-adc6-1ccb4d52f1f9

Credit

No credit.

Status

Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
School of Geography, University of Leeds	Stringer, Christopher		Author
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre		PDCServiceDesk@bas.ac.uk	Point of contact

Maintenance and update frequency

As needed

Maintenance note

Completed

Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > Land Surface > Erosion/Sedimentation > Sediments
• EARTH SCIENCE > Land Surface > Land Use/Land Cover > Land Cover
• EARTH SCIENCE > Land Surface > Land Use/Land Cover

Theme

• Antarctica

• Google Earth Engine

• Landsat

• land cover change

• sediment

Place

• South Georgia Antarctica

• James Ross Archipelago Antarctica

• Byers Peninsula Antarctica

• Snow Island Antarctica

• Alexander Island Antarctica

• west Palmer Land Antarctica

• McMurdo Dry Valleys Antarctica

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

• Land cover

Access constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

no limitations to public access

Access constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

no limitations

Use constraints

License

Other constraints

Open Government Licence v3.0

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

This data is governed by the NERC Data Policy: https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/nerc/our-policies-and-standards/nerc-data-policy/

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

This data is governed by the NERC data policy and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

None

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

Cross reference

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

dependency

Unique resource identifier

url

Codespace

url

Association Type

Cross reference

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

Cross reference

Spatial representation type

Text, table

Language

English

Character set

UTF8

Topic category

• Environment
• Geoscientific information

Begin date

2000-02-21

End date

2003-02-11

Supplemental Information

It is recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of any data, and that the author be contacted with any questions regarding appropriate use. If you find any errors or omissions, please report them to polardatacentre@bas.ac.uk.

Title

European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) Geodetic Parameter Registry

Date (Publication)

2008-11-12

Cited responsible party

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
European Petroleum Survey Group		EPSGadministrator@iogp.org	Publisher

Unique resource identifier

urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::3031

Version

6.18.3

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Statement

Methodology:

Our methodology is based on: Xu, R., Lin, H., Lü, Y., Luo, Y., Ren, Y., Comber, A., 2018. A Modified Change Vector Approach for Quantifying Land Cover Change. Remote Sens. 10, 1578. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10101578.

We acquired images from 2001-2003 from Landsat 7 ETM+ (legacy image) and from 2016-2020 from Landsat 8 OLI (contemporary image) to create a pair of image mosaics for each site.

Suitable images had low cloud cover and limited snow cover.

We selected six bands representing the visual and infrared wavelengths from the images for classification and topographically corrected the images.

We added three further bands to the image in the form of normalised difference snow index (NDSI), normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), and normalised difference water index (NDWI).

We then merged each image pair to create single 18-band imaged, and added 3 further bands to describe the Euclidean distance, change vector angle and spectral angle mapper of each pair. This resulted in a 21-band image.

Using a modern classification of Byers' Peninsula (available from: Stringer, C. (2022). Contemporary (2016 - 2020) land cover classification across West Antarctica and the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/5A5EE38C-E296-48A2-85D2-E29DB66E5E24 ) and a legacy classification of Byers' Peninsula produced using the same methodology as Stringer (2022).

We identified a series of class to class (ClTCl) changes using these classified images. We removed any ClTCl changes that represented less than 1 % of the points to reduce the risk of misclassification. The remaining points described 12 ClTCl change classes: wet ice to coarse/wet sediment (WITC), ice to fine & dry sediment (ITF), ice to coarse/wet sediment (ITC), ice to turbid water (ITT), coarse/wet sediment to turbid water (CTT), coarse/wet sediment to wet ice (CTWI), fine & dry sediment to bedrock (FTB), coarse/wet sediment to bedrock (CTB), coarse/wet sediment to fine & dry sediment (CTF), coarse/wet sediment to vegetation (CTV), bedrock to coarse sediment (BTC), fine and dry sediment to coarse/wet sediment (FTC).

Using 8,500 randomly selected points, we identified the spectral properties of each class to class change using the 21-band image. We then used a random forest classifier (500 trees) to classify the 21-band image at each site. We modified the training dataset for each of our five-proglacial sites to ensure that only changes between classes present in the modern land classification were possible.

Class to class changes should be considered in the context of the process they represent (e.g. land to water, ice to land, etc.) and not solely the ClCl value assigned to them.

The legacy land classification is described by band values of:

0 = No data

1 = Water

2 = Turbid water

3 = Wet ice

4 = Ice

5 = Land (non-differentiated)

6 = Bedrock

7 = Coarse/wet sediment

8 = Fine & dry sediment

9 = Vegetation

The land change classification is described by band values of:

0 = No change

12 = Wet ice to coarse/wet sediment (WITC)

16 = Ice to turbid water (ITT)

18 = Ice to coarse/wet sediment (ITC)

19 = Ice to fine & dry sediment (ITF)

25 = Bedrock to coarse/wet sediment (BTC)

29 = Coarse/wet sediment to turbid water (CTT)

30 = Coarse/wet sediment to wet ice (CTWI)

32 = Coarse/wet sediment to bedrock (CTB)

33 = Coarse/wet sediment to fine & dry sediment (CTF)

34 = Coarse/wet sediment to vegetation (CTV)

39 = Fine & dry sediment to bedrock (FTB)

40 = Fine & dry sediment to coarse/wet sediment (CTW)

Data quality:

First, we calculated the resubstitutuion error to assess the differences between the training data classes and predictions the classifier made. This shows the accuracy of the model based on the training data made available to it was 100.0 %. To validate the accuracy of our change maps, we reproduced the change detection analysis on Byers Peninsula with a 70/30 split of the training points between the classifier and validation. To ensure this split was unbiased, we randomly sorted the training points. This showed a total validation of accuracy of 80.1 %.

Metadata

File identifier

d6721952-a9ab-4021-adc6-1ccb4d52f1f9 XML

Metadata language

English

Character set

UTF8

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Hierarchy level name

dataset

Date stamp

2023-06-01

Metadata standard name

ISO 19115 Geographic Information - Metadata

Metadata standard version

ISO 19115:2003(E)

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre		polardatacentre@bas.ac.uk	Point of contact