Mapping Vegetation Cover For Western Montana and Northern Idaho

In 1994, the Lab joined forces with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Regional Office, and the Columbia River Basin Assessment Project to map existing vegetation and land cover across western Montana and northern Idaho, an area covering 61 million acres.

A pressing issue was how to obtain sufficient ground-truth data to effectively label our Landsat TM classification of western Montana. For this effort, the Lab supplied over 1,200 spectral quads (plots of our unsupervised classification scaled to 7.5 minute USGS quadrangles) to 19 different field crews from all National Forests in the Northern Region. This effort spanned two full field seasons. Forest Service field crews ground-truthed all the different spectral classes in different landform groups. There were over 30,000 points recorded in the field, which we are using as training data in supervised classifications to label polygons to cover type. The Lab developed several posters to explain the classification process: "Devils Fence, Montana Showing Steps in the Classification Process" ( 42K) and "Mapping the Elkhorns: Available Data in the GIS"( 42K). Due to the high volume of incoming data and the need to ensure its integrity, the Lab developed a data pipeline process.

In early 1996 we delivered digital data and documentation to the Forest Service. In addition to land cover, hydrography and digital elevation models (154K) were compiled. Details can be found at the Satellite Imagery Landcover Classification page.