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Colorado River Delta project: River reach (1-7) full timeseries period statistics computed for Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 data.

Metadata Updated: January 6, 2026

These data were compiled for monitoring riparian zone trends and changes in the Lower Colorado Delta as part of the Minute 139 of the 1944 Water Treaty between the United States and Mexico. The quality and quantity of the Delta’s riparian and aquatic ecosystems have been dramatically reduced over the past century, due largely to significant alterations to natural hydrologic and sediment regimes. The Minute 319 Agreement states that 130 million cubic meters of water was to be released during the spring of 2014. Water was released from Morelos Dam at the Northern International Border (NIB) near Yuma, Arizona, to the river’s delta in Mexico, allowing water to reach the Gulf of California for the first time in 13 years since 2000. Our study evaluated the short and long-term effects of environmental flows to hydrological processes in this borderland delta region. Because of the landscape changes and the anticipated impacts of added water in 2014 from Minute 319 water release, we explored remote sensing-based change analysis techniques and data to develop time series data of the Colorado River delta riparian corridor vegetation greenness and water use since the year 2000. We divided the river into 7 Reaches (R1..R7) to separate between the different land covers, management conditions, and general geospatial and hydrological conditions. We generated a variety of vegetation index, ET, anomalies, and trends using time series for all reaches combined then separately. Our data shows Landsat and MODIS derived EVI and EVI2 as well as time-series data of ETLandsat-EVI (mm/day), using a modified (EVI mod) equation, and ETMODIS-EVI with both EVI and then EVI 2 as the input variable to the ET algorithm were extremely consistent across sensors and methods and covaried well with vegetation, climate, and hydrological conditions of each reach and the whole region. These data represent statistics that were computed within each river reach (1-7) for the full timeseries period and for each raster dataset; Landsat 5 Continuity Data (Cont), Landsat 7 Continuity Data (Cont_L7), Landsat 7 NDVI data filtered using QA pixel information (Filter_L7), Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 NDVI data, filtered using QA and Long Term Average (Filter2), Landsat 7 NDVI data, filtered using QA and Long Term Average (Filter2_L7), Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 NDVI Data filtered using QA pixel information (Filtered), and Landsat 5 Continuity, Landsat 7 Continuity and Landsat 8 (MergeCont).

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.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date January 6, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date January 6, 2026
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5f2ae96e82ceae4cb3c09325
Data Last Modified 2020-08-27T00:00:00Z
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 753db76b-ad0d-4fd9-b3ce-3f2b8ba4a53f
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 5176cf5eb3c9e14726c1ccb0687f7ce485d9b13fbaea90687e223473851be081
Source Schema Version 1.1

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