Full tutorial on the use of Vegetation Continuous Fields to calculate land cover.
Go to ResourceThe MOD44B Version 6 Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) yearly product is a global representation of surface vegetation cover as gradations of three ground cover components: percent tree cover, percent non-tree cover, and percent non-vegetated (bare). VCF products provide a continuous, quantitative portrayal of land surface cover at 250 meter (m) pixel resolution, with a sub-pixel depiction of percent cover in reference to the three ground cover components. The sub-pixel mixture of ground cover estimates represents a revolutionary approach to the characterization of vegetative land cover that can be used to enhance inputs to environmental modeling and monitoring applications.
The MOD44B data product layers include percent tree cover, percent non-tree cover, percent non-vegetated, cloud cover, and quality indicators. The start date of the annual period for this product begins with day of year (DOY) 65 (March 5).
Go to ResourcePaper replicated in Usage Example.
Authors
Sam Asher, Teevrat Garg, Paul Novosad
Publish Date
2020
Journal
The Economic Journal
Abstract
There is a long-standing debate over whether new roads unavoidably lead to environmental damage, especially forest loss, but causal identification has been elusive. Using multiple causal identification strategies, we study the construction of new rural roads to over 100,000 villages and the upgrading of 10,000 kilometers of national highways in India. The new rural roads had precisely zero effect on local deforestation. In contrast, the highway upgrades caused substantial forest loss, which appears to be driven by increased timber demand along the transportation corridors. In terms of forests, last mile connectivity had a negligible environmental cost, while expansion of major corridors had important environmental impacts.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Shanchao Wang, Natalie Ayers |
| Last Updated | August 10, 2021, 16:13 (UTC) |
| Created | August 2, 2021, 21:37 (UTC) |
| Stable Link | https://learn.geo4.dev/Deforestation.html |
| Date | 2021-08-02 |
| Content Type | Training Materials |
| Primary Category | Land Use & Land Cover |
| Sub Category | LULC |
| Country Name | Global, India |
| Associated Datasets | Vegetation Continuous Fields (https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/products/mod44bv006/) |
| Publishing Organization | Center for Effective Global Action |