NAFD-ATT Forest Canopy Cover Loss from Landsat, CONUS, 1986-2010

Characterizing the cause of forest canopy changes through time is fundamental to understanding current and future forest functions. A better understanding of forest dynamics can help build linkages between patterns and processes. The North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) products provided in this dataset predict characteristics related to the cause of forest canopy cover losses for the conterminous United States (CONUS) derived from Landsat images for the period 1986-2010. The characteristics are summarized in four separate data layers. The first layer labels the type of change event (stable-no change, removals, fire, stress, wind, conversion, other), the second labels the year of the event, the third and fourth layers measure dominance and diversity, measures of qualitative confidence metrics derived from the model predictions. For each pixel the maps depict the greatest magnitude event occurring between 1986-2010.