Vegetation canopy height from 1970s and 1980s Hexagon spy satellite images for nine US forest types

This dataset features canopy height data derived from 1970s very-high (ca. 1-m) resolution KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite imagery using structure-from-motion point cloud analysis for nine sites of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) in the United States. It also contains contemporary canopy height data for the same sites derived from contemporary airborne LiDAR-data as a reference.

Corresponding publication

Mihai D. Niță, Franz Schug*; Volker C. Radeloff. Changes in tree canopy height over half a century based on 1970s and 1980s Hexagon spy satellite images for nine US forest types (submitted).

Temporal extent

The data contains data representative for ca. 1975 and ca. 2020 (see manuscript).

Data format and units

KH-9 Hexagon data (“hex_images”) are provided as geotiff files with a spatial resolution of ~ 0.6 – 1 m.

Historic (“hist_canopy_height”) and contemporary (“cont_canopy_height”) canopy height data are provided for nine focus areas in the NEON sites, respectively, as geotiff files with a spatial resolution of ~ 0.6 – 1 m (see manuscript).

Canopy height statistics (“canopy_height_statistics”) are provided as tabular (.csv) data and contain the following information:

*.csv: Descriptive statistics of historic and contemporary canopy height in the focus areas (in m). Avg = average, Std = standard deviation, q10 = 10th percentile, Q90 = 90th percentile, range = range.

*_change.csv: Fraction of focus areas (in sqm) that fall into seven loss/gain categories according to the publication.

Further information

For further information, please see the publication or contact Franz Schug ([e-mail]). Visit the website of SILVIS lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison (https://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/).