North American Forest Cover Map Circa 1995

Circa 1995 forest cover classification map for North America, produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center. It categorizes land into five classes: closed forest, open or fragmented forest, other wooded land, other land cover, and water. The dataset was last updated in December 1996.

Use Cases

• Analyze the spatial distribution of 'Closed Forest' and 'Open or Fragmented Forest' classes to assess forest density.
• Calculate the total area of 'Water' and 'Other Land Cover' classes for regional land use studies.
• Use the 'Other Wooded Land' classification to identify transitional or sparse woodland areas.
• Benchmark circa 1995 forest cover against newer datasets to model changes over time.

Strengths

• Provides a continent-scale classification for North America.
• Defines five distinct land cover classes based on a consistent methodology.

Limitations

• Data is temporally stale, representing a snapshot from circa 1995.
• Specific row count, geographic resolution, and sample size are unknown.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center, via NASA Earthdata and CEOS_EXTRA.

Collection Method

Delineated from monthly AVHRR composite images using a hybrid maximum-NDVI and minimum-red compositing technique.

Time Range

circa 1995

Freshness

1996-12-31

Geography

North America