Ecosystems on barrier islands provide socio-ecological services to terrestrial and aquatic endangered species, as well as human inhabitants. The management of these coastal ecosystems is challenged by changes in annual and storm time scales driven by atmospheric, oceanographic, geologic, and human processes. Thus, the need for data and methods to accurately quantify and assess ecosystem and land cover evolution to inform stakeholders is on the rise. A dataset of high-resolution color infrared images of a U.S. National Wildlife Refuge is used to quantify annual land cover changes at a barrier island scale and to identify the effects of hurricanes and their recovery periods. Geospatial analysis and change matrices depict the interconnection between 13 land cover classes. Vegetation growth over regions of bare sand formed by storms leads to the creation of successional habitats, while the loss of bare sand dune to beach, and beach to water are indicators of erosional processes. Storms passing along the ocean and sound side of a barrier island result in different land cover changes that can last anywhere from 4 to more than 7 years, respectively. Management practices for coastal regions and the presence of infrastructure partially control the expansion of marshes, bare sand, maritime brush, and dunes.

障壁岛上的生态系统为陆生和水生濒危物种以及人类居民提供社会生态服务。这些沿海生态系统的管理受到由大气、海洋、地质和人类过程驱动的年度和风暴时间尺度变化的挑战。因此，对准确量化和评估生态系统和土地覆盖演变以告知利益相关者的数据和方法的需求正在增加。美国国家野生动物保护区的高分辨率彩色红外图像数据集用于量化屏障岛规模的年度土地覆盖变化，并确定飓风的影响及其恢复期。地理空间分析和变化矩阵描述了 13 个土地覆盖类别之间的相互联系。风暴形成的裸沙区域的植被生长导致了连续栖息地的产生，而裸沙沙丘向海滩和海滩向水的流失是侵蚀过程的指标。风暴通过屏障岛的海洋和声音一侧会导致不同的土地覆盖变化，这些变化可以分别持续 4 到 7 年以上。沿海地区的管理实践和基础设施的存在部分控制了沼泽、裸沙、海洋灌木和沙丘的扩张。