With the initiation of the Chief's Conservation Agenda, watershed protection and restoration has become a focal point of Forest Service program activity.
Watershed analysis is now a requirement for Forest Plan revisions.
Forest change is a core watershed analysis parameter. The Southern Appalachian Planning Unit extends from Virginia to Alabama encompassing National Forests in 6 states. The breakpoint between vegetated and non-vegetated land was determined independently from the NDVI images for each date. Combinations of the vegetated and non-vegetated classes for the 2 dates were used to derive 4 vegetation change classes. Generalization routines were used to delete and recode to the surrounding class patches smaller than the minimum mapping unit.