The Influence of the "Mixed Pixel" Problem on the Detection of Analogous Forest Communities Between Presettlement and Present in Western New York

We conducted a land change analysis to determine if the forest communities of presettlement and present contain areas that are analogous in composition, using surveys of the Holland Land Company (1797-1799) and U.S. Forest Service (1991-1993) from western New York. Gridded forest-type maps are produced from each survey using two models: a uniform model that assumes each data grid cell is occupied by a single forest type, and a mixture model in which grid cells are assumed to be occupied by multiple forest types in different proportions. The mixture model consistently detects a larger area of analogous communities in the two time periods at both global and local scales.