An Enhanced Canopy Cover Layer for Hydrologic Modeling

The objective of this project is to develop a canopy-cover raster from point data. The study watershed is the South Fork Flathead River, Montana. Tree canopy cover, as measured at permanent forest monitoring plots, will be modeled as a function of NLCD cover class, PRISM mean annual precipitation, elevation, slope, and aspect. Alternative models will be compared using k-fold cross-validation. The final model will be calibrated with all data points and then applied to the entire study watershed.