North American Forest Disturbance Maps from Landsat Time-Series

110 GeoTiff files document forest disturbance and regrowth across 55 sites in the contiguous United States. The data labels each pixel as persistent forest, non-forest, water, or provides the first and last year of disturbance detected. Analysis spans approximately 1984 to 2009, with biennial temporal resolution and spatial resolutions of 28.5 or 30 meters.

Use Cases

• Training machine learning models for pixel-level land cover classification using static class labels (persistent forest, non-forest, water).
• Analyzing the temporal patterns of forest disturbance events using the 'first year of disturbance' and 'last year of disturbance' pixel values.
• Validating continental-scale models of carbon flux and ecosystem dynamics with observed forest change history.
• Assessing the accuracy of automated disturbance detection algorithms against a manually analyzed reference dataset.

Strengths

• Provides a 25-year longitudinal record (approx. 1984-2009) of forest change for 55 specific sites.
• Each 185km x 185km site is represented by two detailed raster products (first and last disturbance year).
• Data production followed a structured three-phase methodology (Prototype, Phase I, Phase II) covering 55 sites.

Limitations

• Sources conflict on the last update date, listing both 2009 and 2026, suggesting potential metadata errors.
• Specific column names or attribute tables for the GeoTiff files are not provided in the available metadata.
• Spatial resolution varies between 28.5 meters (early phases) and 30 meters (Phase II), requiring attention during analysis.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD / NASA Earthdata

Collection Method

Time-series analysis of Landsat imagery for selected forested sites.

Time Range

1984-2009

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:02:09.214919

Geography

55 forested sites across the conterminous United States.