2010 North American Land Cover 30-Meter

<div style='text-align:Left;'><div><div><p><span>The 2010 North American Land Cover 30-meter dataset was produced as part of the North American Land Change Monitoring </span></p><p><span>      System (NALCMS), a trilateral effort between Natural Resources Canada, the United States Geological Survey, and three Mexican </span></p><p><span>      organizations including the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía), </span></p><p><span>      National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of the Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional Para el Conocimiento y Uso de la </span></p><p><span>      Biodiversidad), and the National Forestry Commission of Mexico (Comisión Nacional Forestal).  The collaboration is facilitated </span></p><p><span>      by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an international organization created by the Canada, Mexico, and United States </span></p><p><span>      governments under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation to promote environmental collaboration between the </span></p><p><span>      three countries.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span>      The general objective of NALCMS is to devise, through collective effort, a harmonized multi-scale land cover monitoring </span></p><p><span>      approach which ensures high accuracy and consistency in monitoring land cover changes at the North American scale and </span></p><p><span>      which meets each country’s specific requirements.  </span></p><p><span /></p><p><span>      This 30-meter dataset of North American Land Cover reflects land cover information for 2010 from Mexico and Canada and 2011 </span></p><p><span>      for the United States. Each country developed its own classification method to identify Land Cover classes and then provided </span></p><p><span>      an input layer to produce a continental Land Cover map across North America.  Canada, Mexico, and the United States developed </span></p><p><span>      their own 30-meter land cover products; see specific sections on data generation below.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span>      The main inputs for image classification were 30-meter Landsat data.  Image selection processes and reduction to specific </span></p><p><span>      spectral bands varied among the countries due to study-site-specific requirements.  While Canada selected most images from </span></p><p><span>      the year 2010 with a few from 2009 and 2011, the United States employed mainly images from 2011.  Mexico used all available </span></p><p><span>      images from 2010.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span>      In order to generate a seamless and consistent land cover map of North America, national maps were generated for Canada by </span></p><p><span>      the CCRS; for Mexico by CONABIO, INEGI, and CONAFOR; and for the United States by the USGS.  Each country chose their own</span></p><p><span>      approaches, ancillary data, and land cover mapping methodologies to create national datasets.  This North America dataset </span></p><p><span>      was produced by combining the national land cover datasets.</span></p></div></div></div>

Tags: canada, iipp, imagerybasemapsearthcover, interdepartmental-imagery-publication-platform, land-cover, land-surface, land-use, land-use-land-cover, mexico, mid-latitude, modis, nafta, north-america, north-america-free-trade-agreement, northern-hemisphere, reflectance, remote-sensing, surface-radiative-properties, united-states, us-forest-service, usfs, western-hemisphere
Organization: Department of Agriculture