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Data Product Descriptions

Data Products ›› LANDFIRE Fuel Product Descriptions

Forest Canopy Cover

The Forest Canopy Cover (CC) layer describes the percent cover of the tree canopy in a stand. Specifically, canopy cover describes the vertical projection of the tree canopy onto an imaginary horizontal surface representing the ground’s surface. A spatially explicit map of canopy cover supplies information to fire behavior models, such as FARSITE (Finney 1998), to determine surface fuel shading for calculating dead fuel moisture and for calculating wind reductions. The units of measurement for CC are percent.

LF_1.1.0 (Refresh 2008) – LF_1.1.0 used LF_1.0.5 (Refresh 2001) data as a launching point to incorporate disturbance and its severity, both managed and natural, which occurred on the landscape after 2001. Specific examples of disturbance are: fire, vegetation management, weather, and insect and disease. The final disturbance data used in LF_1.1.0 are the result of several efforts that include data derived in part from remotely sensed land change methods, Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), and the LANDFIRE Refresh events data call. Vegetation growth was modeled where both disturbance and non-disturbance occurred.

LF_1.0.5 (Refresh 2001) – Imagery used in LF_1.0.0 (LANDFIRE National) covered a span of years, and because of this, several large wildland fires are not represented in the data. LF_1.0.5 data ensure wildland fires through 2001 are represented.

Additional improvements found in LF_1.0.5 include resolving inconsistencies along the international borders and updating aspects of the following: riparian and wetlands areas, agricultural and urban vegetation types as burnable, and adjusting the extent of barren and water land cover types.

LF_1.0.2 (Improvements) – With the release of LF_1.0.0 (LANDFIRE National) data products, several areas of improvements were identified. In 2009, leadership direction and funding were provided to implement these improvements for the conterminous states. Improvements included resolving inconsistencies along the international borders and updating aspects of the following: riparian and wetlands areas, agricultural and urban vegetation types as burnable, and adjusting the extent of barren and water land cover types. Change to the LANDFIRE data products occurred only in areas affected by the improvements listed above. Surface and canopy fuel assignments were derived for all of the new existing vegetation types using existing fuel model mapping rules. Final fuel layers were created using a hierarchical merge process, which imbedded updated pixels over the existing values.

LF_1.0.1 (Rapid Refresh) – These data were refined for western zones based upon comments obtained from fuel and fire behavior specialists. Moreover, these data were updated to reflect the effects from recent (1999 to 2007) wildland fires. (Obtain LF_1.0.1 Fire Perimeter Data.)

LF_1.0.0 (National) – CC is generated using a predictive modeling approach that relates Landsat imagery and spatially explicit biophysical gradients to calculated values of average canopy cover from field training sites and digital orthophoto quadrangles.

Metadata:
LF_1.1.0 (Refresh 2008)
LF_1.0.5 (Refresh 2001)
LF_1.0.2 (Improvements)
LF_1.0.1 (Rapid Refresh)
LF_1.0.0 (National)
LF_1.0.0 (National Alaska)

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Finney, M. A. 1998. FARSITE: Fire Area Simulator-model development and evaluation. Res. Pap. RMRS-RP-4, Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 47 p.