Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Water Temperature of Lakes in the Conterminous U.S. Using the Landsat 8 Analysis Ready Dataset Raster Images from 2013-2023

Metadata Updated: February 22, 2025

This data release contains lake and reservoir water surface temperature summary statistics calculated from Landsat 8 Analysis Ready Dataset (ARD) images available within the Conterminous United States (CONUS) from 2013-2023. All zip files within this data release contain nested directories using .parquet files to store the data. The file example_script_for_using_parquet.R contains example code for using the R arrow package (Richardson and others, 2024) to open and query the nested .parquet files. Limitations with this dataset include: - All biases inherent to the Landsat Surface Temperature product are retained in this dataset which can produce unrealistically high or low estimates of water temperature. This is observed to happen, for example, in cases with partial cloud coverage over a waterbody. - Some waterbodies are split between multiple Landsat Analysis Ready Data tiles or orbit footprints. In these cases, multiple waterbody-wide statistics may be reported - one for each data tile. The deepest point values will be extracted and reported for tile covering the deepest point. A total of 947 waterbodies are split between multiple tiles (see the multiple_tiles = “yes” column of site_id_tile_hv_crosswalk.csv). - Temperature data were not extracted from satellite images with more than 90% cloud cover. - Temperature data represents skin temperature at the water surface and may differ from temperature observations from below the water surface. Potential methods for addressing limitations with this dataset: - Identifying and removing unrealistic temperature estimates: - Calculate total percentage of cloud pixels over a given waterbody as: percent_cloud_pixels = wb_dswe9_pixels/(wb_dswe9_pixels + wb_dswe1_pixels), and filter percent_cloud_pixels by a desired percentage of cloud coverage. - Remove lakes with a limited number of water pixel values available (wb_dswe1_pixels < 10) - Filter waterbodies where the deepest point is identified as water (dp_dswe = 1) - Handling waterbodies split between multiple tiles: - These waterbodies can be identified using the "site_id_tile_hv_crosswalk.csv" file (column multiple_tiles = “yes”). A user could combine sections of the same waterbody by spatially weighting the values using the number of water pixels available within each section (wb_dswe1_pixels). This should be done with caution, as some sections of the waterbody may have data available on different dates. All zip files within this data release contain nested directories using .parquet files to store the data. The example_script_for_using_parquet.R contains example code for using the R arrow package to open and query the nested .parquet files. - "year_byscene=XXXX.zip" – includes temperature summary statistics for individual waterbodies and the deepest points (the furthest point from land within a waterbody) within each waterbody by the scene_date (when the satellite passed over). Individual waterbodies are identified by the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) permanent_identifier included within the site_id column. Some of the .parquet files with the byscene datasets may only include one dummy row of data (identified by tile_hv="000-000"). This happens when no tabular data is extracted from the raster images because of clouds obscuring the image, a tile that covers mostly ocean with a very small amount of land, or other possible. An example file path for this dataset follows: year_byscene=2023/tile_hv=002-001/part-0.parquet -"year=XXXX.zip" – includes the summary statistics for individual waterbodies and the deepest points within each waterbody by the year (dataset=annual), month (year=0, dataset=monthly), and year-month (dataset=yrmon). The year_byscene=XXXX is used as input for generating these summary tables that aggregates temperature data by year, month, and year-month. Aggregated data is not available for the following tiles: 001-004, 001-010, 002-012, 028-013, and 029-012, because these tiles primarily cover ocean with limited land, and no output data were generated. An example file path for this dataset follows: year=2023/dataset=lakes_annual/tile_hv=002-001/part-0.parquet - "example_script_for_using_parquet.R" – This script includes code to download zip files directly from ScienceBase, identify HUC04 basins within desired landsat ARD grid tile, download NHDplus High Resolution data for visualizing, using the R arrow package to compile .parquet files in nested directories, and create example static and interactive maps. - "nhd_HUC04s_ingrid.csv" – This cross-walk file identifies the HUC04 watersheds within each Landsat ARD Tile grid. -"site_id_tile_hv_crosswalk.csv" - This cross-walk file identifies the site_id (nhdhr{permanent_identifier}) within each Landsat ARD Tile grid. This file also includes a column (multiple_tiles) to identify site_id's that fall within multiple Landsat ARD Tile grids. - "lst_grid.png" – a map of the Landsat grid tiles labelled by the horizontal – vertical ID.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date February 22, 2025
Metadata Updated Date February 22, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date February 22, 2025
Metadata Updated Date February 22, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/a920a36b85853165d0f8120209f0c20b
Identifier USGS:668580b4d34e8a8b016cd4e6
Data Last Modified 20250206
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 51d94003-154e-46a2-a47f-d1a42cc0cebe
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -127.9688,22.5937,-64.3359,48.691
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7274cc642f79356d0ff3deb02c71adba8791d0f725a1ccfe49bdfaab5a2d6232
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -127.9688, 22.5937, -127.9688, 48.691, -64.3359, 48.691, -64.3359, 22.5937, -127.9688, 22.5937}

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.