Forest Landscape Change in East Texas: 1974–2009

Abstract We used Landsat satellite imagery to monitor forest-landscape change within a 4-county area (Angelina, Nacogdoches, San Augustin, and Shelby) in East Texas. We consulted images from the Multispectral Scanner (60-m resolution), Thematic Mapper (30-m resolution), and Thematic Mapper Plus (30-m resolution) from 1974, 1980, 1984, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. We classified each image into 1 of 2 land-cover types: forest and non-forest. For data-quality assurance, we assessed 2 of the classified maps for accuracy. We assessed accuracy of the 2002 land-cover map using field validation (overall map accuracy of 98.46%), and the 2009 land-cover map using National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) 2009 aerial photos as a reference (overall map accuracy of 90.77%). To determine forest contagion and fragmentation and their effects on the local landscape, we calculated landscape metrics including PPU (patch per unit) and SqP (square pixel) based on landscape patches identified wit...