Forest canopy disturbance geospatial data for Lake Michigan basin, USA, 1985-2008

Recent and previous disturbance of forest canopy, persisting forest cover, persisting nonforest, and water were mapped within Lake Michigan basin, USA, 1985-2008. Landsat time series stacks and a regionally optimized vegetation change tracker algorithm were used for modeling a 30-meter spatial resolution dataset with a minimum mapping unit of 4 pixels (0.88 acres).The dataset was designed and produced to support Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) assessments of water quality. Possible additional purposes include, but are not limited to: monitoring areal forest change across time, forest succession monitoring, forest fragmentation monitoring, and land management planning at a scale of 1:24000 scale or coarser.A corresponding Research Map cartographically portrays this dataset. A companion dataset and map have been produced for Lake Superior basin, USA and Canada. See references below. Original metadata date was 08/01/2014. Minor metadata updates on 12/13/2016 and 10/03/2019.