Circumpolar Arctic Lake Cover

 

Circumpolar Arctic Lake Cover

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Lake cover strongly affects the albedo, or reflectance, of the land surface over large areas of the Arctic and is useful for delineating extensive wetlands. Lake cover was based on the number of AVHRR water pixels in each mapped polygon, divided by the total number of pixels in the polygon. Since the imagery has a pixel size of 1 km2, lake cover is underestimated for areas with many small lakes. No pixels were sampled within two pixels (2 km) of the coastline to avoid including ocean pixels.