Extended Data Fig. 5: Comparison with existing coastal forest loss product.
From: Overlooked and extensive ghost forest formation across the US Atlantic coast
a. Comparing ghost forest scene in NAIP (0.6 m), Sentinel (10 m), and Landsat (30 m). All images are in false-color. Dead trees and healthy vegetation are displayed in white/grey and red, respectively. b. An example comparing our tree mortality map with an existing Landsat-based coastal forest loss product from 2001 to 2016 (C-CAP)68, excluding human-driven land cover change (for example agriculture conversion). The star symbol represents the location of a. There was very little overlap between the high dead tree density area in our map and the high forest loss area in the existing product, since most mortality mapped in our study was not detected in the Landsat-based map. c. Mean forest loss from 2001 to 2016 across elevations (0.5 bin). This highlights that coarse-resolution product severely underestimates coastal forest mortality in low-lying areas. Comparing with forest loss data from 2001 to 2021 yielded similar results. Credit: satellite images in b, Esri. Image in a (left) from NAIP51. Data from NOAA64.
