National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Shrubland Fractional Components for the Western U.S. (ver. 2.0, October 2019)

Dates

Revision: 2019-10-21
Start Date: 2013-05-15
End Date: 2019-09-25
Publication Date: 2019-05-15

Citation

U.S. Geological Survey, and Homer, C., 2019, National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Shrubland Fractional Components for the Western U.S. (ver. 2.0, October 2019): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9LTU2QM.

Summary

This data release has been superseded by version 3.0, available here: https://doi.org/10.5066/P9MJVQSQ Quantifying Western U.S. shrublands as a series of fractional components with remote sensing provides a new way to understand these changing ecosystems. The USGS NLCD team in collaboration with the BLM has produced the most comprehensive remote sensing-based quantification of Western U.S. shrublands to date. Nine shrubland ecosystem components, including percent shrub, sagebrush (Artemisia spp.), big sagebrush, herbaceous, annual herbaceous, litter, and bare ground cover, along with sagebrush and shrub heights, were quantified at 30-m resolution by mapping region. Each region required extensive ground measurement for model training [...]

Summary

This data release has been superseded by version 3.0, available here: https://doi.org/10.5066/P9MJVQSQ

Quantifying Western U.S. shrublands as a series of fractional components with remote sensing provides a new way to understand these changing ecosystems. The USGS NLCD team in collaboration with the BLM has produced the most comprehensive remote sensing-based quantification of Western U.S. shrublands to date. Nine shrubland ecosystem components, including percent shrub, sagebrush (Artemisia spp.), big sagebrush, herbaceous, annual herbaceous, litter, and bare ground cover, along with sagebrush and shrub heights, were quantified at 30-m resolution by mapping region. Each region required extensive ground measurement for model training and validation, two scales of remote sensing data from commercial high-resolution satellites and Landsat 8, and regression tree modeling to create component predictions. In the mapped portion (1,946,100 km²) of the total study area (2,557,556 km²), bare ground averaged 46.8%, shrub 14.4%, sagebrush 4.4%, big sagebrush 3.1%, herbaceous 22.8%, annual herbaceous 4.3% and litter 15.6%. Shrub height averaged 39.8 cm and sagebrush height 10.5 cm. Component accuracies using independent validation averaged R² values of 0.46, RMSE of 10.37 and nRMSE of 0.12, and cross validation averaged R² values of 0.72, RMSE of 5.09 and nRMSE of 0.062. Component composition strongly diverges by level III ecoregions, where 13 of 22 ecoregions are bare ground dominant, 8 are herbaceous dominant, and one is shrub dominant. Sagebrush physically covers 86,219 km², or 4.4%, of our study area, but it is present in 835,507 km², or 42.9%, of the non-masked area of our study area, underscoring its widespread distribution. This version contains some confusion between pinyon-juniper tree cover and shrubs. In a subsequent version, we have applied a more aggressive masking of tree canopy cover to each rangeland component. Specifically, we lowered the tree canopy cover threshold for exclusion from 40 to 25%. For pixels with 1-25% tree canopy cover we ensured that our primary components (shrub, herbaceous, litter, and bare ground) cover summed to 100% when added with the tree canopy. And, for the secondary components (sagebrush, big sagebrush, sagebrush height and shrub height) we reconciled to the primary component (shrub), excluding any pinyon-juniper woodlands. For the updated version with these changes applied, see https://doi.org/10.5066/P9MJVQSQ. This version of data were used as training for the Back-in-Time (BIT) fractional cover time series available at https://doi.org/10.5066/P9C9O66W. Component products can also be downloaded from www.mrlc.gov.

First posted - May 15, 2019 (available from author)
Revised - October 21, 2019 (version 2.0)

Contacts

Point of Contact :: U.S. Geological Survey
Originator :: U.S. Geological Survey, Collin Homer
Publisher :: U.S. Geological Survey
Distributor :: U.S. Geological Survey - ScienceBase
SDC Data Owner :: Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
USGS Mission Area :: Land Resources

Attached Files

sorting

Metadata First

Recent First

Alphabetical

Click on title to download individual files attached to this item.

NLCD_2016_All_Shrubland_Fractional_Components_20191021.xml “Summary Metadata” Original FGDC Metadata	View	33.01 KB	application/fgdc+xml
NLCD_2016_Annual_Herb_Shrubland_Fractional_Component_20191021.zip “Annual Herb zip folder”		931.14 MB	application/zip
ShrubRevisionHistory.txt “Revision History”		1.55 KB	text/plain
“Bare Ground zip folder”		2.62 GB	application/zip
“Big Sagebrush zip folder”		1.34 GB	application/zip
“Herbaceous zip folder”		2.28 GB	application/zip
“Litter zip folder”		1.98 GB	application/zip
“Sagebrush Height zip folder”		1.85 GB	application/zip
“Sagebrush zip folder”		1.57 GB	application/zip
“Shrub Height zip folder”		3.21 GB	application/zip
“Shrub zip folder ”		2.23 GB	application/zip

Related External Resources

Type: Online Link

U.S. Geological Survey, and Rigge, M., 2019, National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Shrubland Fractional Components for the Western U.S. (ver. 3.0, July 2020): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9MJVQSQ.	https://doi.org/110.5066/P9MJVQSQ
The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) consortium Web Services Page	https://www.mrlc.gov/data-services-page
The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) consortium Data download Page	https://www.mrlc.gov/data

Purpose

The goal of this project is to provide a rigorous large-area shrubland-habitat classification and inventory with statistically validated products and estimates of precision across the Western U.S. This first release is of the provisional products.

National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Shrubland Fractional Components for the Western U.S. (ver. 2.0, October 2019)

Dates

Citation

Summary

Summary

Contacts

Attached Files

sorting

Metadata First

Recent First

Alphabetical

Purpose

Map

Communities

Associated Items

Tags

Provenance

Additional Information

Identifiers

Item Actions

View Item as ...

Save Item as ...

View Item...

Dates

Citation

Summary

Summary

Contacts

Attached Files sorting Metadata First Recent First Alphabetical

Related External Resources

Purpose

Map

Communities

Associated Items

Tags

Provenance

Additional Information

Identifiers

Item Actions

View Item as ...

Save Item as ...

View Item...

Attached Files

sorting

Metadata First

Recent First

Alphabetical