Virginia Forest Harvest Points, 2014-2017

This dataset includes: 1) forest harvest records for Virginia for dates within April 1, 2014 and June 29, 2017 and 2) non-harvested pine and deciduous forest locations. Harvest records were extracted from the Virginia Department of Forestry Harvest Inspection Records, which are maintained with the Integrated Forest Resource Information System. Each point was manually interpreted using high resolution in Google Earth to adjust the location of the point from the landing (i.e., the location on the road where the logs are loaded onto the truck) to the harvested stand, within a 64 m radius buffer.  This facilitates linkage to Landsat or other satellite pixels.  Harvest types include total harvest, thinning, partial cut (including thinning), commercial selection, clear cut, biomass removal, shelterwood deferment, seed tree, and group selection.  Non-harvested pines (Persistent Pine) and deciduous forests (Persistent Deciduous) are also included, but were compiled from areas within the National Land Cover Database evergreen and deciduous classes that were not reported as a harvest in the Virginia Harvest Inspection Records (for any date). ESRI’s random points algorithm (ESRI ArcMap 10.6) was used to generate points that were cross-checked Google Earth historic imagery for evidence of any harvest. Points which had any evidence of harvest were removed. The remaining points were considered to be non-harvested pines or deciduous forest.

Much of this dataset was first described in Thomas et al. 2021. Differences include: 1) non-harvested deciduous forests were added, 2) some harvested deciduous points were removed if they were too close together, 3) this dataset contains the original harvest mechanism description provided by the Virginia Department of Forestry, while Thomas et al (2021) reclassified the harvest types for simplification.