Time series dataset of precipitation, temperature, and vegetation index for Ecuador's parishes, 2005–2024
Description
This dataset provides monthly, parish-level summaries of three key environmental variables for continental Ecuador from January 2005 to December 2024: precipitation (mm), land surface temperature (°C), and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). For each of the 1,034 parishes defined by the 2022 INEC administrative boundaries, four statistical measures are provided: minimum, maximum, mean, and standard deviation. Data were derived from NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) satellite products (GPM IMERG for precipitation, MODIS 11C3 for temperature, and MODIS 13C2 for NDVI). All products were processed using TerrSet, reprojected to UTM with 100×100 m pixels, and aggregated at the parish level using zonal statistics. Files are provided in Excel format (.xlsx), one file per variable, with four sheets corresponding to each summary statistic. Column headers include official INEC parish codes, parish names, year, month, and value. This dataset is suitable for environmental monitoring, climate variability analysis, spatial epidemiology, and public health research, particularly for studying the environmental determinants of vector-borne and climate-sensitive diseases.
Files
Steps to reproduce
Data acquisition and processing workflow The dataset was generated by processing three freely available satellite products from NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS): GPM IMERG (V07B) for precipitation (mm/h, 0.1° resolution, 2005–2024), MODIS Terra MOD11C3 and Aqua MYD11C3 (V6.1) for monthly land surface temperature (scaled 16-bit integer, 0.05° resolution, 2005–2024), and MODIS Terra MOD13C2 and Aqua MYD13C2 (V6.1) for monthly NDVI (scaled 16-bit integer, 0.05° resolution, 2005–2024). All monthly composites were downloaded from the EOSDIS Earthdata platform and imported into TerrSet Geospatial Monitoring and Modeling Software (Clark Labs) for preprocessing. Rasters were reprojected from geographic coordinates to UTM projection, with a uniform spatial resolution of 100 × 100 meters. Measurement units were standardized: precipitation values were multiplied by the number of hours in the month to obtain millimeters/month; temperature values were converted from LST_Day_CMG to °C using the formula LST(°C) = (value × 0.02) − 273.15; and NDVI values were rescaled by dividing by 10,000. Terra and Aqua products for temperature and NDVI were averaged on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Zonal statistics were applied using official INEC 2022 parish boundaries to calculate monthly minimum, maximum, mean, and standard deviation for each variable in each parish. Outputs were exported to Excel format (.xlsx), one file per variable, with four sheets corresponding to each statistic. The workflow is fully reproducible from the original NASA satellite products using the specified tools, parameters, and administrative boundaries.
Institutions
- Universidad UTEPichincha, Quito