Estimates of plant water use needs for Tres Rios wetland and riparian corridor based on Landsat greenness and evapotranspiration time series from 2013-2024

These spatial and tabular data were compiled to have a decade-long record of the water usage in the riparian corridor and the wetlands near Phoenix, Arizona called the Tres Rios area to observe the effect of riparian and wetland health as characterized by vegetation greenness and its water use or evapotranspiration. The objective of our study was to quantify evapotranspiration (in millimeters per day) for each area, the riparian zone and the wetlands. These spatial data represent polygons of land cover with specific plant species and plant community types from which we extracted time series of vegetation indices and actual evapotranspiration (ETa) using a nearby Arizona Meteorological Station, Phoenix Encanto. These tabular data represent Vegetation Indices (VI), Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) and Reference Evapotranspiration ETo time series. Included VIs are the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from Landsat. Landsat spectral bands were used to estimate the 2-band EVI (EVI2). ETa was calculated based on EVI and EVI2, named ET(EVI) and ET(EVI2) respectively. For its calculation Nagler’s ET empirical model was utilized. There is one table or time series per reach. The summary tables contain the date and the corresponding values for VI, ET0 and ETa. These data were collected for the two land cover types, riparian and wetland, in the Tres Rios area near the City of Phoenix, Arizona. These data were created by the University of Arizona’s Vegetation Index and Phenology Lab, using surface reflectance data collected by the spaceborne mission Landsat 8 to estimate EVI2. NDVI and EVI was taken directly from the Landsat data. Later these two vegetation indices were used to estimate actual evapotranspiration (in millimeters per day). ET0, and consequently ETa, was estimated from AZMET. These spatial and tabular data can be used for monitoring the health of riparian vegetation and water use trends from 2013 to 2024.