Active Forest Management in the Southeastern United States, 1987-2019 (0.25 degree)

This dataset shows the amount of land (percent area) in the southeastern United States where both clear cuts and forest thins occurred at the same location but on different dates. This type of forest management is characteristic of industrial forest plantations for loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) in the region. Clear cuts and thins were identified according to the algorithm published in Thomas et al. (2021), which was applied to 30 m Landsat multitemporal data (all images, with cloud masks applied) for every three years from 1987-2019 and summarized according to 0.25 degree grid cells as the percent of the total area. Areas are considered to be actively managed plantations if they were classified by the National Landcover Database (NLCD) products (2016 release) as evergreen, mixed forest, or woody wetlands prior to the harvest year and exhibit both of these harvest types. Results should be interpreted such that actively-managed plantations have occurred at that location at some point during the time period, but not necessarily the entire period, depending on land use transitions.  

Note that for 1987-2001, the VCT-based NACP North American Forest Dynamics Project: Forest Disturbance and Regrowth Data (Goward et al. 2012) (change year) was used as a predictor variable in place of the Global Forest Change product (Hansen et al. 2013) (loss year).