Overview

LanDAT is a vegetation monitoring tool for assessing whether landscape change is leading to desirable outcomes, and for understanding landscape resilience in a quantitative and integrative way.

The map viewer lets users explore regularly updated data and graphical information describing landscape dynamics over short and long terms.

LanDAT works from the premise that measuring and interpreting these dynamics improves informed decision-making in natural resource management and ecosystem service conservation.

Map Layers

This section lets users view landscape information on the map — both LanDAT datasets and ancillary layers from other providers (in addition to reference maps; ancillary landscape data are located in the ‘Landscape and Climate Characteristics’ group).

• To put a layer on the map click the checkbox next to its label.
• To expand or collapse a group of related layers click the group's bar.
• To view a layer's description click .
• To adjust a layer's transparency move the slider marked by .

Vegetation Index Graphs

This section visualizes the change over time in vegetation greenness — the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) — at locations you specify.

NDVI data are gathered daily by two satellite-based moderate resolution sensors (MODIS). These daily data are filtered and smoothed to generate an 8-day composite time series that spans the period of MODIS record from 2000 until present*.

The LanDAT map layers quantify annual and multi-annual phenological patterns present in these data**. (See our detailed Overview for more information).

• To create a graph for a location, click the location on the map.
• To center the map on a graph's location, click the "Show On Map" button.
• To scroll the list of graphs to an existing location's marker — — click that marker on the map.
• To remove a graph and its marker, click .

How to cite LanDAT

General information from LanDAT website:
Landscape Dynamics Assessment Tool. USDA Forest Service. Available online: https://landat.org. [Date accessed].

LanDAT geospatial data access:
LanDAT Geospatial Data. 2019. USDA Forest Service. Available online: https://landat.org/maps. [Date accessed].

Credits

The LanDAT project was developed by the U.S. Forest Service's Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (EFETAC) in partnership with UNC Asheville's National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), the Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Stennis Space Center, and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

For more information about the LanDAT project please return to its main page.

* Spruce, J.P., G.E. Gasser, and W.W. Hargrove. 2016. MODIS NDVI Data, Smoothed and Gap-filled, for the Conterminous US: 2000-2015. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1299

** Brooks, B.-G. J., D. C. Lee, L. Y. Pomara, and W. W. Hargrove. 2020. Monitoring Broadscale Vegetational Diversity and Change across North American Landscapes Using Land Surface Phenology. Forests 11:606.
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