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The MultiResolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium is an interdepartmental effort of the U.S. government to share data and set common standards for land cover products. It is the umbrella under which various agencies operate to assure consistent and accurate presentation of land cover and land use in the United States. More on MRLC |
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NLCD 92 (National Land Cover Data 1992) is a 21-category land cover classification scheme that has been applied consistently over the conterminous U.S. It is based primarily on the unsupervised classification of Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) 1992 imagery. Ancillary data sources included topography, census, agricultural statistics, soil characteristics, other land cover maps, and wetlands data. The NLCD 92 product consists of raster data with a spatial resolution of 30 meters. The data is cast to the Albers Equal-Area Conic projection, and it is referenced to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). More on NLDC 92 data |
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GIRAS Landuse/Landcover (LULC) data for the conterminous U.S., by 1:250,000 scale quadrangles, is digital data collected by USGS and converted to ARC/INFO format by the EPA. This data is useful for environmental assessment of land use patterns with respect to water quality analysis, growth management, and other types of environmental impact assessment. Use may be limited due to currency. Each quadrangle of land use data has a different representative date. Date ranges from mid 1970s to early 1980s are common. When joined together these quadrangles will not likely match along edges due to differences in interpretation and time coverage. The data is attributed using the Anderson (1976) classification schema for land cover. The land in NE Pennsylvania is described by 23 categories grouped in seven general classes. The MAP Center combined the agricultural and rangeland classes. More on GIRAS-LULC data |
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