DOI: 10.5066/p1454a6h
title: Clay Banks Landslide Complex, Nooksack River, Washington State–landslide and river planform maps derived from aerial imagery (1933-2022)

description: This dataset contains 17 fluvial and hillslope planforms for a 2.25 km section of the Nooksack River and adjacent Clay Banks landslide complex in northwestern Washington State spanning 1933-2022. Data include polygon and line features of river and hillslope planform structures for each year including landslides, the active river channel, the floodplain corridor, and vegetated floodplain bars. Data are digitized manually in GIS software at a scale of 1:1000 from aerial imagery, including imagery from the Puget Sound River History Project compiled for 1933, 1950, 1955, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1998, and 2002 (Puget Sound River History Project, 2003; Collins & Sheikh, 2004) and National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery for 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022 (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2006-2022). All imagery has a pixel resolution of 1x1m or finer.

Data are stored in a geopackage, ClayBanksRiverHillslopePlanformMaps.gpkg. Within the geopackage, layers are organized as ‘YYYY_FeatureLabel’ where YYYY denotes the year of reference followed by feature label including:

‘ActiveHillslope’: polygons of individual landslide deposits active at or between imagery dates. We identify active landslides based upon a visual transition from vegetated to exposed sediment or apparent sediment displacement between imagery time periods.
‘MainRiverChannel’: a polygon mapping the area of continuous water coverage at the time of image acquisition.
‘FloodplainCorridor’: a polygon of the floodplain corridor including the extent of high flow fluvial deposits and channel scars.
‘VegetatedBars’: polygons noting regions of shrubs and small trees occupying the floodplain corridor. When plotted with the floodplain corridor, these features help indicate preferential pathways of flow at high water stages.
‘ChannelCenterline’: a line feature which maps the flow trajectory of the main river channel.

The data also include an “AverageValleyCenterline” line feature that roughly delineates the time-averaged flow trajectory across all planform maps. An additional ‘layer_styles’ layer is included for default layer coloring and style that may be used when loading data via QGIS or in Python (e.g. GeoPandas).

These data are used in Ahrendt et al., (in press) to analyze planform changes in fluvial and hillslope morphology. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

References:

Ahrendt, S. M., Mirus, B. B., LaHusen, S. R., Perkins, J. P., in press, Dynamic feedbacks between river meandering and landsliding in northwestern Washington glacial terraces: Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface

Collins, B. D., & Sheikh, A., 2004, Historical Channel Locations of the Nooksack River. University of Washington. https://books.google.com/books?id=_b2A0AEACAAJ

U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2006-2022, National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP): Washington State NAIP imagery. https://doi.org/10.5066/F7QN651G

Puget Sound River History Project, 2003, Nooksack River orthophotos. Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington. https://riverhistory.ess.washington.edu/