LanDAT Carbon Storage Loss or Gain 2000-2014

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center has developed the Landscape Dynamics Assessment Tool (LanDAT) to help natural resource conservation practitioners monitor and assess impacts on changing landscapes and the ecological services and benefits they provide to people. LanDAT features a web-based map viewer that includes an annually-updated set of spatial data products as well as a website that provides a comprehensive overview of the tool and case studies of forest threats and their impacts to specific natural resources. LanDAT summarizes with clarity the fusion of three components: 1) a massive data set derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite system; 2) advanced computing and data analytic techniques developed by the Eastern Threat Center, NASA Stennis Space Center, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and 3) new methods for quantifying landscape phenological change integrated with a set of information-theoretic measures of ecosystem growth and development proposed and refined by Ulanowicz (1986, 1997). This dataset depicts the difference in carbon density as Mg/ha.