This data set consists of repeat digital imagery from a tower-mounted digital camera (hereafter, PhenoCam) maintained by the USDA-ARS Hydrology Remote Sensing Laboratory (HRSL) in the Lower Chesapeake Bay (LCB) watershed. HRSL is a member of the PhenoCam network, which has as its mission to serve as a long-term, continental-scale, phenological observatory. Imagery is uploaded to the PhenoCam server every 30 minutes. The archived images provide a permanent record that can be visually-inspected to determine the phenological state of the vegetation at any point in time. Vegetation greenness metrics (e.g., GCC) derived from the ratio of the green color band to sum of red, green, and blue color bands serve as proxies for vegetation greenness. Greenness metrics can be extracted from the images using simple image processing methods in 1-day or 3-day increments.

This dataset is available to the public and may be freely downloaded. Please keep the designated Contact person informed of any plans to use the dataset. Consultation or collaboration with the original investigators is strongly encouraged. Publications and data products that make use of the dataset must include proper acknowledgement.

The development of PhenoCam has been supported by multiple entities. Those include the Northeastern States Research Cooperative, NSF’s Macrosystems Biology program (award EF-1065029), DOE’s Regional and Global Climate Modeling program (award DE-SC0016011), the US National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program, the USA National Phenology Network (grant number G10AP00129 from the United States Geological Survey), and is currently supported by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service.

This research was a contribution from the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network. LTAR is supported by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service.