Forest Biomass Geospatial Data Sets for the Contiguous United States and Alaska

This geospatial data set was produced by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA), Remote Sensing Band (RSB) to show the extent and distribution of forest biomass the contiguous United States and Alaska in greater detail than is possible with the FIA plot data alone. The maps were created by modeling forest biomass collected on FIA sample plots as functions of more than sixty geospatially continuous predictor layers. Among the predictor layers used were digital elevation models (DEM) and DEM derivatives; Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) multi-date composites, vegetation indices and vegetation continuous fields; class summaries from the 1992 National Land Cover Data set (NLCD); various ecologic zones; and summarized PRISM climate data. Modeling was performed using a data mining package, Cubist/See5, which was loosely coupled with Leica Geosystems Imagine image processing software. One significant advantage of Cubist/See5 is that it is a non-parametric modeler that assumes nothing about the structure of the input data sets. RSB scientists produced the models and biomass geospatial data sets for their FIA unit�s region of responsibility. In addition, each unit produced a forest/non-forest mask.

The original data sets (Contiguous U.S. and Alaska data) were reformated from ERDAS Imagine format to GeoTIFF format, reprojected from Albers Conical Equal Area projection to WGS_1984 projection, and then mosaicked together as a single data file by ORNL DAAC.

References:

Blackard, J.A.; Finco, M.V.; Helmer, E.H.; Holden, G.R.; Hoppus, M.L.; Jacobs, D.M.; Lister, A.J.; Moisen, G.G.; Nelson, M.D.; Riemann, R.; Ruefenacht, B.; Salajanu, D.; Weyermann, D.L.; Winterberger, K.C.; Brandeis, T.J.; Czaplewski, R.L.; McRoberts, R.E.; Pattterson, P.L.; Tymcio, R.P. 2008. Mapping U.S. forest biomass using nationwide forest inventory data and moderate resolution information. Remote Sensing of the Environment. 112: 1658-1677.