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Northeastern U.S. Suspended Particulate Matter Product, Derived from Landsat 5-8 (2000–2020)

December 10, 2025

This dataset provides high spatial resolution (30 m) raster products of Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) for the Northeastern United States over the past two decades (2000–2020). The product is derived from Landsat 5–8 using a particle composition-adaptive SPM retrieval algorithm (Teng et al., 2025) and is designed to resolve fine-scale coastal sediment dynamics that are not well captured in conventional ~1 km ocean color products. The dataset includes multiple statistical summaries of SPM derived from all high quality Landsat observations during 2000-2020 for at each grid cell. Each statistical summary is presented as a raster with 30 m grid cell corresponding to Landsat grid locations, including the following:

1) Mean SPM concentration (mg/L)
2) Median SPM concentration (mg/L)
3) Top 2 percentile SPM concentration (mg/L)
4) Top 5 percentile SPM concentration (mg/L)
5) Root Mean Square (RMS) SPM concentration (mg/L)
6) Long-term change rate in SPM over the past 20 years (mg/L/century)

Together, these metrics characterize the central tendency and the extreme values of SPM distribution, offering valuable insights into sediment availability along the coast. This dataset can support studies on coastal geomorphology, tidal marsh vulnerability, and blue carbon storage, and provides a foundation for long-term monitoring of sediment-driven coastal processes.

Publication Year 2025
Title Northeastern U.S. Suspended Particulate Matter Product, Derived from Landsat 5-8 (2000–2020)
DOI 10.5066/P13NUE98
Authors Brian Yellen, Wenxiu Teng, Qian Yu, Jonathan Woodruff
Product Type Data Release
Record Source USGS Asset Identifier Service (AIS)
USGS Organization National Climate Adaptation Science Center
Rights This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal
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