Bare Ground Index (2018)
Data Description:
The Bare Ground Index (BGI) is a ratio of bare ground to tree cover, and was only calculated in forested regions (a forested region was defined as a 90-meter pixel with >10% of tree cover). It was used to detect and map forest degradation within central India in 2018. The coverage region is broken into 233 study area zones.
The BGI was calculated and mapped within forest. It’s value ranges from -1 to +0.8. A BGI of zero indicates an equal fraction of tree cover to bare ground pixels. Negative numbers indicate that there was a higher amount of tree cover as compared to bare ground, whereas positive numbers indicate that there was a higher amount of bare ground as compared to tree cover. Non-forest areas where the BGI was not calculated will have a BGI of -10000.
The BGI kml files can be downloaded from the link below and study area zones can be downloaded directly as a zip file.
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Recommended Citation(s):
Khanwilkar, S., Galletti, C., Mondal, P., Urpelainen, J., Nagendra, H., Jhala, Y.V., Quresh, Q.,DeFries, R. (2021). Tropical Deciduous Forests of South Asia: Land Cover Classification and Monitoring Forest Degradation Using the Bare Ground Index LULC. NASA LCLUC Metadata. Accessed [Insert Date] from https://lcluc.umd.edu/metadatafiles/LCLUC-2017-PIDefries/.
BGI Kml Files (To download, click on links from ‘classified_bgi_0.kml’ to ‘classified_bgi_232.kml’)