Fetch USFS/NLCD Tree Canopy Cover raster values for a service area via the ArcGIS ImageServer REST API
domain: apps.fs.usda.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Identify the correct ImageServer endpoint for your target year/region, e.g. https://apps.fs.usda.gov/fsgisx01/rest/services/RDW_LandscapeAndWildlife/USFS_Analytical_2016_TreeCanopy_CONUS/ImageServer, or a newer NLCD-hosted layer linked from mrlc.gov/data.
Use standard Esri ImageServer REST operations: /exportImage to clip a raster over an area of interest, or /identify to read a single pixel's percent-canopy value at a point.
Pass a bounding box or geometry plus spatial reference (e.g. bboxSR/imageSR) and f=json (or an image format) as required by the operation.
For area-of-interest summaries rather than raw pixels, pull the clipped raster and compute zonal statistics client-side (e.g. with rasterio or arcpy) — the ImageServer does not return a pre-aggregated percentage for a polygon.
Cross-check the layer path against mrlc.gov/data-services-page, since NLCD tree-canopy layer names and hosts have changed across release years.
Known gotchas
Native resolution is 30 meters per pixel — useful for city/regional canopy trend analysis, not for locating individual trees on a property.
Multiple overlapping ImageServer endpoints exist across USFS- and MRLC-hosted mirrors and years; using a stale layer path silently returns an outdated canopy-cover year.
No authentication is required, but these are large public federal ArcGIS servers with no published SLA — build in retries/backoff for outages.
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