The BGI is a ratio of bare ground to tree cover and was derived by aggregating the land cover. Tree cover and bare ground was identified from Planet Labs Very High-Resolution satellite data using a Random Forest classifier, resulting in a thematic land cover map with 83.00% overall accuracy (95% confidence interval: 61.25%–90.29%). We produce a very-high resolution 3-meter (m) land cover dataset and develop a normalized index, the Bare Ground Index (BGI), to detect and map exposed bare ground within forests at 90 m resolution in central India. Despite increased availability and accessibility of satellite data, approaches for detecting forest degradation have been limited. Satellite imagery has been used to provide global and regional estimates of forest cover.
