Vermont Forest Indicators Dashboard

Canopy Density

Score for 2018:
--/5
Long-Term Trend:
Scores are 
Canopy density is an assessment of how lush and green a forest stand is, which can be used as a proxy for photosynthetic activity. It can be estimated using data from the MODIS satellite. Canopy reflectance at different wavelengths is used to calculate a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is an assessment of overall greenness of the forest canopy. Higher NDVI values are associated with a greener and more photosynthetically-active forests. MODIS captures NDVI twice a month over Vermont's forests. Here, NDVI is aggregated across the full growing season. The current year is scored as the distance between the minimum and maximum values.
FEMC Archive Resources
Dataset: MODIS TIN Yearly Mean and STD