A set of 20 images that the Landsat 5 satellite collected from 1991 to 1995 was the main source of information for Luman, who worked on the inventory with Natural History Survey colleagues Mark Joselyn and Liane Suloway. Ten images are necessary to cover the state. But some types of cover, certain crops and woodland species, for example, look so similar in some seasons that extra images of the same area have to be taken at different times of the year. A few oddities also turn up, such as the patchwork quilt of pasture lands that occur only in the Amish communities of Douglas County. Don't confuse land cover with land use.
Land use is different because it refers to how humans make use of the land.
Peoria, Illinois, as it appears on the land cover map. But take a look at our new map. You ll see that the forest is quite fragmented. A cluster of large structures surrounded by parking space, for example, may be a factory complex or a shopping mall. It allows us to consider ecosystem processes.