Full Record - Satellite shoreline mapping of ice-dammed lake evolution at Isunnguta Sermia, West Greenland, 1987-2024

Satellite shoreline mapping of ice-dammed lake evolution at Isunnguta Sermia, West Greenland, 1987-2024

GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/02193

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Summary

Abstract:
We present here shorelines that were mapped from satellite images covering the ice-dammed lake evolution at Isunnguta Sermia, West Greenland from 1987 to 2024. Satellite imagery and ArcticDEM DSM strips were used to map shorelines of a ~3 km2 and ~100 m ice-dammed lake abutting the northern tongue of Isunnguata Sermia (western Greenland) to investigate its filling and drainage history. Mapping was carried out manually in QGIS v3.34 and Google Earth Engine Digitisation Tool (GEEDiT) v. 2.03. In total 322 lake shoreline dates were mapped between 1987 and 2024 revealing 12 fill-drain cycles with a periodicity of 1-3 years. This mapping formed part of the NERC-funded SLIDE (Subglacial Lakes at Isunnguata Sermia: Dynamics and Evolution) research project.

The SLIDE project is funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council Standard Grant NE/X000257/1. We acknowledge the support of Kangerlussuaq International Science Support and the local knowledge and guidance of Chris Sorensen.

Keywords:
Greenland, Kalaallit Nunaat, ice-dammed lake, remote sensing

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Citation

Livingstone, S., Storrar, R., Chudley, T., & Curry, C. (2026). Satellite shoreline mapping of ice-dammed lake evolution at Isunnguta Sermia, West Greenland, 1987-2024 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/8dd122d3-f47f-4518-ba25-3114023213b9

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Access Data

GET DATA

http://ramadda.data.bas.ac.uk/repository/entry/show?entryid=8dd122d3-f47f-4518-ba25-3114023213b9

PROJECT HOME PAGE

https://the-slide-project.github.io/

REFERENCE MATERIALS

RELATED DATA SET METADATA

SOFTWARE PACKAGES

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Constraints

Access Constraints:	No restrictions apply
Use Constraints:	This data is governed by the NERC data policy http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy/ and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/.

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Basic Information

Creation Date:	2026-04-27
Dataset Progress:	Complete
Dataset Language:	English
ISO Topic Categories:	Geoscientific Information Imagery/Base Maps/Earth Cover
Parameters:	Hydrosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glaciers Hydrosphere > Surface Water > Drainage Hydrosphere > Surface Water > Lakes
Personnel:
Name	UK PDC
Role(s)	Metadata Author
Organisation	British Antarctic Survey

Name	Stephen J Livingstone
Role(s)	Investigator, Technical Contact
Organisation	University of Sheffield

Name	Rob Storrar
Role(s)	Investigator
Organisation	Sheffield Hallam University

Name	Thomas R Chudley
Role(s)	Investigator
Organisation	University of Bristol

Name	Charlotte Curry
Role(s)	Investigator
Organisation	University of Sheffield

Parent Dataset:	N/A

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Additional Information

Reference:	Livingstone, S., Storrar, R., Doyle, S., Thorpe, S., Moffatt, A., Sole, A., ... & Booth, A. (2025). Ice dynamic and hydrological response to ice-dammed lake drainages at Isunnguata Sermia, West Greenland.https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2026.10163 Chudley et al., (2024). pDEMtools: conveniently search, download, and process ArcticDEM and REMA products. Journal of Open Source Software, 9(102), 7149, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.07149 Porter, C., et al. (2023), ArcticDEM, Version 4.1, Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/3VDC4W Lea, J. M.: The Google Earth Engine Digitisation Tool (GEEDiT) and the Margin change Quantification Tool (MaQiT) - simple tools for the rapid mapping and quantification of changing Earth surface margins, Earth Surf. Dynam., 6, 551-561, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-551-2018, 2018 Morlighem M, and others (2022) IceBridge BedMachine Greenland (IDBMG4, Version 5) [Data set]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/GMEVBWFLWA7X Nuth C and Kääb A (2011) Co-registration and bias corrections of satellite elevation data sets for quantifying glacier thickness change. The Cryosphere, 5(1), 271-290. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-5-271-2011.
Quality:	Manual mapping was carried out by two experienced mappers (Stephen Livingstone and Rob Storrar). Images obscured by clouds or where the presence of icebergs made it difficult to identify the shoreline were excluded from the dataset. The uncertainty in shoreline-derived lake levels was calculated from the standard deviation (1sigma) of elevation values, with the lower image resolutions typically resulting in greater uncertainty (mean uncertainty: ± 9.4 m for Landsat; ± 5.4 Planet; ± 4.7 for ArcticDEM).
Lineage/Methodology:	Shorelines were manually digitized from 322 optical satellite images and time-stamped ArcticDEM DSM strips between 1987 and June 2024. USGS/NASA Landsat 5-8 (30 m resolution), ASTER (15 m resolution) and Sentinel-2 (10 m resolution) imagery was digitized using the Google Earth Engine Digitisation Tool (GEEDiT) v. 2.03 (Lea, 2018). This was supplemented by images from Planet Labs that were acquired using the 3 m resolution PlanetScope instrument. Time-stamped ArcticDEM DSM strips at 2 m resolution (Porter et al., 2023) were extracted and co-registered using the pDEMtools python package (Chudley and Howat, 2024). Co-registration was performed against the ArcticDEM mosaic following Nuth and Kääb (2011), with stable ground identified using the BedMachine v5 (Morlighem and others, 2022) land mask. Shorelines for both ArcticDEM strips and Planet imagery were manually digitized in QGIS v3.34. Shoreline digitization involved mapping the boundary between water and land for regions where the edge of the lake could be clearly discriminated. Shoreline elevations were extracted from the bathymetry determined using the co-registered 2019-08-11 ArcticDEM DSM strip when the lake was fully drained; median and standard deviation elevations were then calculated for each time-stamped lake-shoreline.

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Locality

Temporal Coverage:
Start Date	1987-06-25
End Date	2024-06-18

Spatial Coverage:
Latitude
Southernmost	67.19977
Northernmost	67.21562
Longitude
Westernmost	-50.22515
Easternmost	-50.13474
Altitude
Min Altitude	N/A
Max Altitude	N/A
Depth
Min Depth	N/A
Max Depth	N/A

Data Resolution:
Latitude Resolution	N/A
Longitude Resolution	N/A
Horizontal Resolution Range	30 meters - < 100 meters
Vertical Resolution	N/A
Vertical Resolution Range	N/A
Temporal Resolution	N/A
Temporal Resolution Range	N/A

Location:
Location	Greenland
Detailed Location	Isunnguata Sermia, Kalaallit Nunaat

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Instrumentation

Data Collection:	QGIS v3.34 to map the shorelines

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Storage

Distribution:
Distribution Media	Online Internet (HTTP)
Distribution Size	400 kB
Distribution Format	ASCII
Fees	N/A

Data Storage:	This dataset consists of 2 files: - shoreline_mapping.shp ~390 kB: The raw shoreline mapping data are provided as shapefiles (.shp) with an EPSG3413 projection, and the timeseries data derived from this as a .csv file. All elevation data are in metres. For each mapped shoreline shapefile the attribute table contains an ID, date, remote sensing source (source), median elevation of the shoreline (elev_mdn_m) and the standard deviation of elevation of the shoreline (elev_sd_m). - shoreline_data_IS.csv ~15kB The .csv file contains date, median elevation (median_altitude), standard deviation of elevation (altitude_standard_deviation) and data source (source) columns. These combined multiple shapefiles from the same day (i.e. fragments of lake shoreline due to gaps in these data) to calculate a single combined median and standard deviation per timestamp. This led to a total of 322 lake shorelines.

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