National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2011 Accuracy Assessment Points Conterminous United States

Accuracy assessment is a standard protocol of National Land Cover Database (NLCD) mapping. Here we report agreement statistics between map and reference labels for NLCD 2011, which includes land cover for 2001, 2006, and 2011. The two main objectives were assessment of agreement between map and reference labels for the three, single-date NLCD land cover products at Level II and Level I of the classification hierarchy, and agreement for 17 land cover change themes based on Level I classes (e.g., forest loss; forest gain; forest, no change) for three change periods (2001–2006, 2006–2011, and 2001–2011). The single-date overall accuracies were 82%, 83%, and 83% at Level II and 88%, 89%, and 89% at Level I for 2011, 2006, and 2001, respectively. [...]