National Land Cover Database
Science Center Objects
EROS is central to the creation of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), which is updated every five years and stands as the definitive land cover database for the United States.
NLCD helps scientists understand Landsat observations by turning them into pixel-by-pixel maps of specific features.
The left frame of the image pair above shows the Dallas, TX area. The right frame shows NLCD's “Impervious Descriptor” data layer - the first and only nationwide, Landsat-scale map of roadways and oil production facilities in the U.S. The image above depicts on-the-ground conditions during the year 2016, but data are also available for 2011, 2006, and 2001.
Used separately or in combination with NLCD products like the Urban Imperviousness, the dataset can be used to investigate questions on changes to the Nation’s transportation infrastructure and its impact on the wider ecosystem, wildlife habitat, human health, and more.
NLCD is generated in cooperation with the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) a partnership of Federal agencies working together to produce current, nationally consistent, land cover products for all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
Click here to learn about NLCD 2019, scheduled for release in mid-2021.
NLCD is used for thousands of applications that require information on landcover location or where it is changing.
The latest iteration is NCLD 2016. It contains 28 different land cover products characterizing land cover and land cover change across 7 epochs from 2001-2016, urban imperviousness and urban imperviousness change across 4 epochs from 2001-2016, tree canopy and tree canopy change across 2 epochs from 2011-2016 and western U.S. shrub and grassland areas for 2016. Data are available on the MRLC website, either as prepackaged products or custom product areas can be interactively chosen using the MRLC viewer.
NLCD 2016 offers land cover for years 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016, and impervious surface for 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016. These products update all previously released versions of landcover and impervious products for CONUS (NLCD 2001, NLCD 2006, NLCD 2011) and are not directly comparable to previous products. NLCD 2016 land cover and impervious surface product versions of previous dates must be downloaded for proper comparison.
A new product for NLCD 2016 land cover is the NLCD Land Cover Change Index. This index provides a simple and comprehensive way to visualize change from all 7 dates of land cover in a single layer. The change index was designed to assist NLCD users to understand complex land cover change with a single product.
NLCD 2016 also offers an impervious surface descriptor product (see example of its use to the right). This product identifies types of roads, core urban areas, and energy production sites for each impervious pixel to allow deeper analysis of developed features.
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Date published: January 25, 2021Status: ActiveEyes on Earth Episode 42 – Rangelands of the U.S.
Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. In this episode, we hear how Landsat helps monitor vulnerable rangelands in the Western U.S.
Contacts: Janice Nelson -
Date published: May 26, 2020Status: ActiveLCMAP and NLCD: Complementary Data for Understanding the Geography of the United States
Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) Collection 1 science products provide unprecedented monitoring of past changes occurring in land cover and condition across the conterminous U.S. over more than 30 years at an annual timestep.
Contacts: USGS EROS Customer Services -
Date published: August 30, 2019Status: ActiveEyes on Earth Episode 3 - National Land Cover Database
Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. In this episode, we talk about the National Land Cover Database.
Contacts: Janice Nelson -
Date published: September 11, 2018Status: ActiveWestern U.S. Cheatgrass and Shrubland Monitoring
The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center National Land Cover Database team in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has produced the most comprehensive remote-sensing based quantification of western United States shrublands to date.
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Date published: September 12, 2013Status: ActiveNational Land Cover Database Visualization and Information Tool
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) serves as the definitive Landsat-based, 30-meter resolution, land cover database for the Nation. NLCD supports a wide variety of Federal, State, local, and nongovernmental applications that seek to assess ecosystem status and health, understand the spatial patterns of biodiversity, predict effects of climate change, and develop land management policy....
Contacts: Jon DewitzAttribution: Community for Data Integration (CDI)
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Date published: July 31, 2020National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Shrubland Fractional Components for the Western U.S. (ver. 3.0, July 2020)
Quantifying Western U.S. shrublands as a series of fractional components with remote sensing provides a new way to understand these changing ecosystems. The USGS NLCD team in collaboration with the BLM has produced the most comprehensive remote sensing-based quantification of Western U.S. shrublands to date. Nine shrubland ecosystem components, including percent shrub, sagebrush (Artemisia
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Date published: June 4, 2020
Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Litter Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018
The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a lar...
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Date published: June 4, 2020
Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Annual Herbaceous Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018
The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a lar...
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Date published: June 4, 2020
Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Herbaceous Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018
The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a lar...
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Date published: June 4, 2020
Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Bare Ground Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018
The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a lar...
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Date published: June 4, 2020
Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Shrub Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018
The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a lar...
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Date published: June 4, 2020
Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Sagebrush Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018
The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a lar...
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Date published: February 13, 2020
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Land Cover - Alaska
The Alaska National Land Cover Database 2016 was created using change detection between the nominal dates of 2011 and 2016 utilizing Google Earth engine composites of Landsat imagery. Traditionally, previous classifications of Alaska used path row data and spectral comparisons between path rows along with ancillary data to derive areas of change. Alaska has many challenges for land cover...
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Date published: February 13, 2020
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Land Cover - Alaska (ver. 2.0, July 2020)
This update to the Alaska National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 replaces the files dated 20200213. In this update the landcover footprint was extended along the northern coast to include the islands that were missed in previous versions, and several duplicate roads (offset by 1 or 2 pixels) were removed on the Aleutian Islands. The Alaska National Land Cover Database 2016 was create
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Date published: February 13, 2020
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Impervious - Alaska
The Alaska National Land Cover Database 2016 was created using change detection between the nominal dates of 2011 and 2016 utilizing Google Earth engine composites of Landsat imagery. Traditionally, previous classifications of Alaska used path row data and spectral comparisons between path rows along with ancillary data to derive areas of change. Alaska has many challenges for land cover...
Eyes on Earth Episode 42 – Rangelands of the U.S.
The extensive rangelands across the Western United States are threatened by invasive grasses, climate change, and altered fire regimes that can disturb the landscape. The largely semi-arid lands are also important for the survival of species that need undisturbed sagebrush ecosystems to thrive. But most satellite-based land cover datasets don’t offer the kind of detail
Eyes on Earth - Episode 3 - The National Land Cover Database
Sorting Landsat data into an accurate and reliable record of land cover in the United States is one of the most important jobs at EROS. This episode of Eyes on Earth explores the what, how, and why of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD).
Mapping Roadways at Landsat Scale
A satellite flying over this area northwest of Dallas, TX will capture a wide variety of urban and rural activity. The 80-odd square miles seen in the Landsat image on the left includes airports, dense urban centers, suburban and exurban neighborhoods, manufacturing and distribution centers, oil and gas production sites, lakes, forests, wetlands and more.
Mapping
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Date published: April 6, 2021New EROS Tool Shows County-By-County Change Across United States
The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center has released a new online tool to help the public better visualize county-by-county land change across the United States.
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Date published: February 26, 2021Detecting Shrub Recovery in Sagebrush Steppe: Comparing Landsat-Derived Maps with Field Data on Historical Wildfires
Sagebrush can be scarce after fires in a semiarid ecosystem and their paucity over vast burn areas creates challenges for detection by remote sensing.
Attribution: Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center -
Date published: January 27, 2021
EROS Rangeland Tools Aid Western U.S. Land Managers
The extensive rangelands across the Western United States are threatened by invasive grasses, climate change, and altered fire regimes that can disturb the landscape. The largely semi-arid lands are also important for the survival of species that need undisturbed sagebrush ecosystems to thrive.
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Date published: November 18, 2020Land Cover Partnership Releases Change Datasets for U.S., Mexico, Canada
The release of a change dataset for North America’s three largest countries will enable GIS researchers to more easily study continent-scale land use patterns that cross international borders.
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Date published: August 3, 2020Rangeland Mapping Tools Take Users Back in Time Across Western U.S.
The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center and Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management have just released an interactive web viewer that puts 33 years of information on the rangelands of the Western U.S. within reach of anyone with an Internet connection.
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Date published: July 27, 2020NLCD Readies Improvements for Upcoming Release of 2019 Product Suite
The next edition of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) will appear more quickly than previous editions, offer accuracy comparable to NLCD 2016, and include previously-unreleased historical information on imperious urban surfaces.
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Date published: April 17, 2020New Land Cover Maps Depict 15 Years of Alaska Change
The latest edition of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2016) for Alaska is now publicly available.
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Date published: February 27, 2020EROS contributes to New Land Cover Maps for U.S., Canada, Mexico
The three largest countries in North America share trade, climate and culture in a host of broad and specific ways. A new set of land cover maps for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico highlights a specific, long-standing scientific collaboration designed to benefit each nation.
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Date published: May 24, 2019
New NLCD products to be folded into Esri software, Earth Engine
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 product suite was recently released for bulk download on the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) website. Users of ArcGIS and Google’s Earth Engine, however, will soon have web access to the data directly through their preferred platform.
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Date published: May 20, 2019New Land Cover Maps Depict 15 Years of Change across America
Today, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released the latest edition of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) for the U.S. – the most comprehensive land cover database that the USGS has ever produced. The NLCD 2016 documents land cover change in the Lower 48 states from 2001 to 2016. During this 15-year period, 7.6 percent of the conterminous U.S. changed land cover at least once.