Ohia Dieback Study - Hawaii Island Canopy Status Assessment Table, 1977 - 2015

We analyzed very-high-resolution imagery to assess status of Metrosideros polymorpha forests across an 83,603 hectare study area that experienced extensive canopy dieback in the 1970s on the eastern side of the island of Hawaii. Using GIS we generated 1170 virtual vegetation plots with a 100 m radius; 541 plots in areas mapped in 1977 with trees dead or mostly defoliated (dieback), and 629 plots in adjacent wet forest habitat, previously mapped as non-dieback condition. In each plot we estimated the percent of M. polymorpha trees dead or mostly defoliated, and percent of trees with healthy crowns. These results were combined with habitat data to produce a spatial model depicting probability of canopy dieback within the study area. Seventy-nine percent of plots mapped in 1977 in dieback condition recovered their canopy and were now considered in non-dieback condition. Ninety-one percent of plots in previous non-dieback areas were found to still have a healthy M. polymorpha canopy in 2015. This dataset contains the results of the analysis showing the status of the ohia canopy in 1977 and its status from the plot assessment conducted in 2015. Additionally, the dataset contains several covariate variables that were used during the analysis.