The increase of tree density in forests of the American Southwest promotes extreme fire
events, understory biodiversity losses, and degraded habitat conditions for many wildlife
species. To ameliorate these changes, managers and scientists have begun planning
treatments aimed at reducing fuels and increasing understory biodiversity. However, spatial
variability in tree density across the landscape is not well-characterized, and if better known,
could greatly influence planning efforts. We used reflectance values from individual Landsat …