Delta-X: Ecogeomorphic Cell Products across the MRD, LA, USA, 2021

This product delineates the Mississippi River Delta (MRD) landscape into distinct ecogeomorphic cells, which are small contiguous areas of land with similar ecological and geomorphological characteristics. The study area is the Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins of the MRD in southern Louisiana, U.S., which was the focus of NASA's 2021 Delta-X campaign. Each ecogeomorphic cell is a small homogeneous area of similar vegetation and elevation (or bathymetry). A "cell" typically consists of a cluster of contiguous pixels in a raster image, although cells of single pixels are present. The elevation was derived from the USGS Digital Elevation Model, and the vegetation was characterized by its spectral signature as measured by near infrared (NIR) reflectance and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). NIR and NDVI were computed from Sentinel-2 images acquired January through September 2021. The data are provided in shapefile and GeoTIFF formats. The vector shapefiles contain the distinct ecogeomorphic cells as polygons with unique labels (i.e., ID number). A raster image of these ecogeomorphic cells provided wherein the pixel values are the polygon labels from the shapefiles. The GeoTIFFs hold the mean and standard deviations of bathymetry, NIR, and NDVI spectral indices within each ecogeomorphic region (polygon). The raster data are provided with a spatial resolution of 0.000045 degrees (approximately 5 meters).