Circa 1995 land cover classification for South America, produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center. It maps five classes: closed forest, open or fragmented forest, other wooded land, other land cover, and water. The data was last updated in the system in December 1996.
Use Cases
- Analyze the distribution of 'Closed Forest' versus 'Open or Fragmented Forest' classes to assess forest integrity.
- Calculate the historical extent of 'Other Wooded Land' for baseline ecological studies.
- Mask 'Water' and 'Ocean' pixels to isolate terrestrial land cover for change detection models.
- Use the 'Other Land Cover' class to identify non-forested areas for agricultural or urban expansion studies.
Strengths
- Provides a continent-wide snapshot for a specific historical period (circa 1995).
- Classification includes five distinct land cover classes relevant to forestry.
Limitations
- Data is temporally stale, representing conditions from approximately 1995.
- Spatial resolution and accuracy are not specified in the provided description.
Provenance
- Source
- U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center.
- Collection Method
- Delineated from monthly AVHRR composite images using a hybrid maximum-NDVI and minimum-red compositing technique.
- Time Range
- circa 1995
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- South America