Yukon Flats vegetation types

Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge (YKF NWR) and Koyukuk NWR (KUK NWR), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), initiated a project with the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center to acquire map products needed for moose habitat assessment. The objective of this work was to create a suite of products which included: Estimated Vegetation Heights, probability of Willow Estimates, and Vegetation Type Maps. These products are based on spectral characteristics found in bands 2 through 7 of Landsat 8 OLI scenes processed to surface reflectance, acquired in summer of 2013, and late winter of 2014. Training data was collected by fixed wing aircraft and helicopter by USFWS refuge staff, and extrapolated by the methods described. This project, “ Yukon Flats NWR willow mapping” (PI: Delia Vargas Kretsinger) was funded through the USFWS Inventory and Monitoring program via an Interagency Agreement between the USGS EROS and the USFWS – Alaska Regional Office. The data products are provisional in nature and are intended to support USFWS land management decisions. These data have not been validated with independent test data but received favorable qualitative assessment by local field experts.