This data layer was developed for use by regional conservation organizations and partners located in or adjacent to the Sky Islands region of the Southwest and to fill a key data gap, namely detailed, consistent, and project-relevant spatial datasets on land cover. These data emerged, in part, from a stakeholder-based process that involved the participation of multiple organizations, including Conservation Science Partners, Northern Arizona University, The Nature Conservancy, USGS, USFWS, Arizona Game and Fish Department, Borderlands Restoration, Sky Islands Alliance, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and Universidad de Hermosillo. Development of these data was generously supported by Wilburforce Foundation.


We developed a regression-tree based model using NLCD 2011 (v3; http://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2011.php) land cover values from v3 2011 as the response variable. We found cells within contiguous “patches” of the same time and removed edge pixels. We then randomly sampled from within the core areas to obtain 800 points for each class. We developed a series of additional data layers, principally using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. These include:
- Landsat 5 (spring and fall 2011) raw DN values for all bands
- Normailzed Difference Vegetation Index; mTPI, and multi-scale topographic position index, described in Theobald et. al 2015 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143619;
- CHILI, the Continuous Heat-Insolation Load Index (also described in Theobald et al. 2015)
- Mean annual precipitation from PRISM
- Built-up areas
- Land surface temperature from Landsat 5.