Pacific Atoll Vegetation Maps

Vegetation classification maps of 235 Pacific atolls (1,925.6 km2 in total) featuring four land cover classes (broadleaf tree canopy, coconut palm canopy, low vegetation, and non-vegetated surface) at 2 m resolution. Coconut palms are mapped with a balanced accuracy of 85.3%, producer’s accuracy (sensitivity or recall) of 82.5%, user’s accuracy (positive predictive value) of 68.7%, and specificity of 88.1%. Balanced accuracies for broadleaf tree canopy and low vegetation were lower (75.5% and 70.3%, respectively), in part because these classes often appear similar in satellite imagery. Non-vegetated land was classified with a balanced accuracy of 87.7%. The 235 classification maps feature an overall accuracy of 71.1%, significantly higher than the no-information rate of 34.4% (p = 2.2e−16). Across the 235 mapped atolls, 36.6±1.0% of vegetated surfaces featured a coconut palm canopy. By area, 58.3±1.8% of tree canopies (i.e. excluding low-statured vegetation) were coconut palm. A patch c..., Maps are based on an interative random forest classification with spectral and textural features extracted from WorldView-2 imagery and trained and validated by human observers using 44,000 training points and nearly 1,969 validation points. See related manuscripts for more methodological informaion:
Burnett, M.W., French, R., Jones, B., Fischer, A., Holland, A., Roybal, I., White, T.D., Steibl, S., Anderegg, L.D.L., Young, H., Holmes, N.D., Wegmann, A., 2024. Satellite imagery reveals widespread coconut plantations on Pacific atolls. Environmental Research Letters 19, 124095. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad8c66

Burnett, M.W., White, T.D., McCauley, D.J., De Leo, G.A., Micheli, F., 2019. Quantifying coconut palm extent on Pacific islands using spectral and textural analysis of very high resolution imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing 40, 7329–7355. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2019.1594440

, , # Very High Resolution Vegetation Maps of 235 Pacific Atolls

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0k6djhb7x](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0k6djhb7x)

Michael W. Burnett - The Nature Conservancy and University of California Santa Barbara - [[e-mail]](mailto:mburnett@ucsb.e)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Overview

This Dryad deposit contains data related to the article [\"Satellite imagery reveals widespread coconut plantations on Pacific atolls\" by M.W. Burnett et al. in *Environmental Research Letters*](https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad8c66)*.* Specifically, the following data may be accessed here:

1. 235 georeferenced rasters containing the vegetation classifications of Pacific atolls at 2 m spatial resolution (GeoTIFF format)
2. 235 shapefiles containing summary land cover data and unique identification numbers for Pacific atolls' individual islands (GPKG format)
3. 221 georeferenced PDF files containing vegetation classifications of Pacific atolls at 2 m...