Title: Forest land area estimates from vegetation continuous fields

Author: Nelson, Mark D.; McRoberts, Ronald E.; Hansen, Matthew C.

Year: 2004

Publication: In: Remote sensing for field users: proceedings of the 10th Forest Service remote sensing applications conference; 2004 April 5-9; Salt Lake City, UT. Bethesda, MD: American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

Abstract: The USDA Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides data, information, and knowledge about our Nation's forest resources. FIA regional units collect data from field plots and remotely sensed imagery to produce statistical estimates of forest extent (area); volume, growth, and removals; and health and condition. There is increasing need to analyze and display FIA estimates within a geospatial context. A nationwide map of forest land would provide the basis for mapping additional FIA attributes. Forest land maps derived from existing satellite image-based land cover products are inconsistent with FIA estimates of forest land area, especially within smaller geographic areas. We describe an image stratification approach for calibrating MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) data to produce maps of forest land that provide unbiased estimates of forest land area compared to FIA estimates across multiple spatial scales.