The new commercial high resolution systems will make such data widely available. Among the many examples are the following. Land use and land cover changes are important for a wide variety of reasons. High resolution data are likely to be most valuable for monitoring purposes, where change is occurring at very fine scales as occurs around many urban areas. Such changes are not directly observable with conventional remotely sensed data.
Land cover can have direct impacts on the atmospheric system.
Existing remote sensing systems such as those of Landsat and NOAA's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer can provide much valuable information. But sample finer resolution data can contribute to providing more reliable information. One such example is the size and distribution of certain types of wetlands which have major impacts on trace gas emissions. Forests, rangelands and croplands and other ecosystems respond to climatic variations whether we are considering inter-annual change or longer term change. Many of these changes occur at very local scales.