As part of ongoing research into product improvement, this page contains a host of products that have additional classes and values to aid researchers. These products were developed as both intermediate steps to generate the base NLCD products, and as value added products that standalone to provide additional insights. Please read the description provided for each to understand best use for these products.
This product shows the most recent forest disturbance date between the years 1986-2021 for every year. This product combines information from the NLCD 2021 change detection, land cover classification, and the LANDFIRE Vegetation Change Tracker (VCT) disturbance product from 1984-2010. For NLCD 2021, this product was used to assess where disturbance occurred for forest areas. This product was originally intended only for forest areas, but it also can be useful for other landcover classes. For example, agricultural areas, which are typically disturbed yearly by tillage, are represented as being disturbed prior to 1986. This "prior to 86" disturbance call was used in some instances as a delineation between forested and non-forest areas. Other classes that are not forest may also be represented with a disturbance indication if the area was forest at some time point during 1986-2021.
NLCD Forest Disturbance Date
This product was derived using the 9-epoch NLCD land cover (2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021) from the released NLCD 2021 product suite. Any change between two consecutive epochs is calculated and the total change frequency/time for each pixel is recorded. This product shows an integer count total of any recorded change for the time period 2001-2021. This product is meant to be used with the change index and individual dates of Land Cover to provide users with a more in depth look at where multiple change events in the same location are occurring on the landscape.
NLCD Land Cover Change Count
To better develop NLCD 2021 landcover, spectrally stable grass and shrub areas were separated from the spectrally changing areas of shrub and grass represented by forest harvest, burns, regrowth, and other disturbances. Essentially, this separation usually identifies shrub and grass climax areas from shrub and grass areas in transition back to a forest. This difference is expressed with two extra classes of land cover, called Shrub-Forest and Herbaceous-Forest which are representing areas of current shrub and grass expected to transition back to a forest. Alternatively, the shrub and grass classes of Shrub/Scrub and Grassland/Herbaceous will likely not transition to a forest. However, be cautioned that no extensive ecological analysis went into these class delineations, they are primarily spectral based separations used to delineate broad classes of grass and shrub. The change index associated with this and the regular NLCD classes are identical.
NLCD Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes All Years
NLCD Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes Change Index
NLCD 2021 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2019 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2016 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2013 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2011 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2008 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2006 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2004 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
NLCD 2001 Land Cover with additional Forest Transition Classes
Below are the based derivatives that generated the user-friendly NLCD canopy products. These science products have no masking and have complementary use with the standard error (SE) showing error for each corresponding TCC canopy pixel. This error can be threshold in this pairing to produce greater or lesser canopy extent.
TCC SE 2008
TCC SE 2009
TCC SE 2010
TCC SE 2011
TCC SE 2012
TCC SE 2013
TCC SE 2014
TCC SE 2015
TCC SE 2016
TCC SE 2017
TCC SE 2018
TCC SE 2019
TCC SE 2020
TCC SE 2021
TCC SE All Years
TCC 2008
TCC 2009
TCC 2010
TCC 2011
TCC 2012
TCC 2013
TCC 2014
TCC 2015
TCC 2016
TCC 2017
TCC 2018
TCC 2019
TCC 2020
TCC 2021
TCC All Years