National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2011 Accuracy Assessment Points Conterminous United States
Dates
Publication Date
2017-02-05
Time Period
2011
Revision
2024-05-16
Citation
U.S. Geological Survey, 2014, National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2011 Land Cover Conterminous United States (ver. 2.0, May 2024): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P97S2IID.
Summary
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. [...]
Summary
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. Overall accuracies for 2006 and 2001 land cover components of NLCD 2011 were approximately 4% higher (at Level II and Level I) than the overall accuracies for the same components of NLCD 2006. User's accuracies were high for the no change reporting themes, commonly exceeding 85%, but were typically much lower for the reporting themes that represented change. Only forest loss, forest gain, and urban gain had user's accuracies that exceeded 70%. NLCD 2011 user's accuracies for forest loss, forest gain, and urban gain compare favorably with results from other land cover change accuracy assessments.
Wickham, J., Stehman, S.V., Gass, L., Dewitz, J.A., Sorenson, D.G., Granneman, B.J., Poss, R.V., and Baer, L.A., 2017, Thematic accuracy assessment of the 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD): Remote Sensing of Environment, v. 191, p. 328–341, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.12.026.
Revision 2.0 by Audra J Griebel on May 16, 2024. To review the changes that were made, see “NLCD2011_RevisionHistory.txt” in the attached files section.