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5-year Relative Fractional Vegetation Cover at Abandoned Energy Development Sites on the Colorado Plateau

Metadata Updated: October 30, 2025

This data release contains a single vector shapefile and two text documents with code used to generate the data product. This vector shapefile contains the locations of 365 “plugged and abandoned” well sites from across the Colorado Plateau with their respective relative fractional vegetation cover (RFVC) values. Oil and gas pads are often developed for production, and then capped, reclaimed, and left to recover when no longer productive (collectively termed “plugged and abandoned”). Understanding the rates, controls, and degree of recovery of these reclaimed well sites (well pads) to a state similar to pre-development conditions is critical for energy development and land management decision processes. We used the Soil-Adjusted Total Vegetation Index (SATVI) to measure post-abandonment vegetation cover relative to pre-drilling condition as a metric of recovery: relative fractional vegetation cover (RFVC). The Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform allows for the automated processing of hundreds of images for each of the hundreds of sites, permitting time series analyses that were not easily achieved with earlier image processing methods. The time-series package BFAST in R statistical software enables the efficient detection of breaks in temporal trends, helping to identify when vegetation was cleared from the site and the magnitudes and rates of vegetation change after abandonment. The code text documents include: 1) Google Earth Engine Script: Well Pad Means, Medians, and DART Percentile Time Series Collection 2) R Script: Generation of BFAST time series models and calculation of RFVC The Google Earth Engine and R code used for data processing, and the final shapefile were used for statistical analysis in the following paper: Waller, E.K., Villarreal, M.L., Poitras, T.B., Nauman, T.W., Duniway, M.C. 2018. Landsat time series analysis of fractional plant cover changes on abandoned energy development sites. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 10.1016/j.jag.2018.07.008

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 September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 30, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 30, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5b649c5be4b006a11f733ed2
Data Last Modified 2020-08-30T00:00:00Z
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://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-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 aa07b6d4-d943-41ba-b8d7-681a19d714c8
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -111.4063, 34.5060, -107.1196, 40.4205
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 51ffca5efcbfd3b77ddf0ce57e87bb9aaa184997e442e26a475f276200722495
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -111.4063, 34.5060, -111.4063, 40.4205, -107.1196, 40.4205, -107.1196, 34.5060, -111.4063, 34.5060}

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