Abstract:
This layer was created to facilitate ecological understanding by reclassifying the base land cover layer LCSTRAT1992 which was based on satellite imagery collected in the early 1990s. To better understand ecology condition using satellite collected land cover data it is often beneficial to focus on more specific land cover types. This layer groups all the forest classes into one forest class while grouping agriculture, urban and suburban classes into a non-forest class. This allows condition to be assessed using metrics, such as those tabulated using GIS tools found in Fragstats (McGarigal & Marks, 1995), to be consistently calculated within ecological units like watersheds and political units like counties. The resulting raster format layer has three classes: Forest, Not Forest and Water.
Supplemental_Information:
Land Cover Code
0 NotForest
1 Forest
Citations
Anderson, A.P., E.E. Hardy, J.T. Roach, and R.E. Witmer. 1976. A land use and land cover classification system for use with remote sensor data. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 964. Pp. 28.
Brooks, R.P., D.H. Wardrop, and J.A. Bishop. 2002. Watershed-Based Protection for Wetlands in Pennsylvania. Final Report to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Report No. 2002-2, Penn State Cooperative Wetlands Center. 64 pp.
Debinski, D.M., and R.D. Holt. 2000. A survey and overview of habitat fragmentation experiments. Conservation Biology 14:342-355.
Mahan, C.G., J.A. Bishop, M.A. Steele, G. Turner, and W.L. Myers. 2010. Habitat characteristics and revised Gap landscape analysis for the northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus), a state endangered species in Pennsylvania. The American Midland Naturalist 164(2): 283-295.
McGarigal, K., and B. Marks. 1995. FRAGSTATS: spatial pattern analysis program for quantifying landscape structure. General Technical Report. PNW-GTR-351. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. Pp. 122.
Myers, W., J. Bishop, R. Brooks, T. O'Connell, D. Argent, G. Storm, J. Stauffer, and R. Carline. 2000. Pennsylvania Gap Analysis Project: Leading Landscapes for Collaborative Conservation. School of Forest Resources & Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Environmental Resources Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802. U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division, Gap Analysis Program.
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). 1995. Digital Roads Data. Prepared and maintained by PennDOT, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Online at: http://www.pasda.psu.edu.
Robbins, C.S., D.K. Dawson, and B.A. Dowell. 1989. Habitat area requirements of breeding forest birds of the middle Atlantic states. Wildlife Monographs 103:1-34.