USGS EROS Archive – Land Cover – Annual NLCD Collection 1 Impervious Descriptor
The Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Impervious Descriptor product provides a map of road networks within impervious areas and distinguishes roads from other built surface classes.
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) project announces (June 25, 2025) the release of Annual NLCD Conterminous U.S. (CU), Collection 1.1. With this release, Collection 1.1 adds 2024 to the temporal extent for the 6 annual land cover products. The Annual NLCD products consist of 40 years of CU land cover dynamics.
Annual NLCD Spectral Change Day of Year in the h04v01tile in the Northwest United States.
The Impervious Descriptor product provides additional categorical information for urban and rural areas. The Impervious Descriptor product classifies impervious areas of the NLCD Land Cover product into road and urban (i.e., other built surfaces) classes. Unlike legacy versions of NLCD prior to the Annual NLCD Collection 12023 edition, this is not a reporting layer for urban source information but is the direct result of a supervised classification algorithm.
Annual NLCD Collection 1 Product Suite products are processed to 30-meter resolution on an Albers Equal Area Conic (AEA) projection using the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) datum. Annual NLCD products are created as raster images stored as GeoTIFFs with accompanying metadata. The products delivered via EarthExplorer (EE) are Tiled products processed to a common tiling scheme of uniform dimensions bounded by static corner points in a defined grid system. Each tile contains 5,000 x 5,000 30-meter pixels.
Annual NLCD Impervious Descriptor Legend
| Class/Value | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | No Data |
| 1 | Roads |
| 2 | Urban |
Additional Information
- Annual National Land Cover Database
- Annual NLCD Science Product User Guide
- Annual NLCD Reference and Validation
- Accuracy Assessment Publication
Access Data
EarthExplorer (EE) can be used to search, preview, and download Annual NLCD Land Cover dataset. The collection is available under the Land Cover > Annual NLCD Product Suite category. The data provided via EE are Tiled products.
Annual NLCD Collection 1 Product Suite are also distributed by the MRLC Web Viewer, the MRLC Mosaic Download website, ScienceBase, as Annual NLCD web services, and through USGS AWS S3 (Oregon us-west-2 region). Each distribution site provides its own unique options for the products and services they provide.
Download Package
The download package is a zipfile containing all years per tile per product.
Example of zip bundle:
Tile: H21V15
Product = Land Cover
Years = 1985 to 2024 (40 years)
Files = .tif, .xml, and .aux.tif (3 files per tile per year)
Within zip bundle for tile H21V15 would be 120 files for Annual NLCD C1 Landcover.
Product Digital Object Identifier (DOI)#
Citation
Annual NLCD Product Suite Citation Information
Annual NLCD has no restrictions on the use of science products. Annual NLCD does ask that if you use the data as part of a publication or presentation that use the following citation below; however, it is not a requirement to use the data.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 2024, Annual NLCD Collection 1 Science Products: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P94UXNTS
The Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Impervious Descriptor product provides a map of road networks within impervious areas and distinguishes roads from other built surface classes.
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) project announces (June 25, 2025) the release of Annual NLCD Conterminous U.S. (CU), Collection 1.1. With this release, Collection 1.1 adds 2024 to the temporal extent for the 6 annual land cover products. The Annual NLCD products consist of 40 years of CU land cover dynamics.
Annual NLCD Spectral Change Day of Year in the h04v01tile in the Northwest United States.
The Impervious Descriptor product provides additional categorical information for urban and rural areas. The Impervious Descriptor product classifies impervious areas of the NLCD Land Cover product into road and urban (i.e., other built surfaces) classes. Unlike legacy versions of NLCD prior to the Annual NLCD Collection 12023 edition, this is not a reporting layer for urban source information but is the direct result of a supervised classification algorithm.
Annual NLCD Collection 1 Product Suite products are processed to 30-meter resolution on an Albers Equal Area Conic (AEA) projection using the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) datum. Annual NLCD products are created as raster images stored as GeoTIFFs with accompanying metadata. The products delivered via EarthExplorer (EE) are Tiled products processed to a common tiling scheme of uniform dimensions bounded by static corner points in a defined grid system. Each tile contains 5,000 x 5,000 30-meter pixels.
Annual NLCD Impervious Descriptor Legend
| Class/Value | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | No Data |
| 1 | Roads |
| 2 | Urban |
Additional Information
- Annual National Land Cover Database
- Annual NLCD Science Product User Guide
- Annual NLCD Reference and Validation
- Accuracy Assessment Publication
Access Data
EarthExplorer (EE) can be used to search, preview, and download Annual NLCD Land Cover dataset. The collection is available under the Land Cover > Annual NLCD Product Suite category. The data provided via EE are Tiled products.
Annual NLCD Collection 1 Product Suite are also distributed by the MRLC Web Viewer, the MRLC Mosaic Download website, ScienceBase, as Annual NLCD web services, and through USGS AWS S3 (Oregon us-west-2 region). Each distribution site provides its own unique options for the products and services they provide.
Download Package
The download package is a zipfile containing all years per tile per product.
Example of zip bundle:
Tile: H21V15
Product = Land Cover
Years = 1985 to 2024 (40 years)
Files = .tif, .xml, and .aux.tif (3 files per tile per year)
Within zip bundle for tile H21V15 would be 120 files for Annual NLCD C1 Landcover.
Product Digital Object Identifier (DOI)#
Citation
Annual NLCD Product Suite Citation Information
Annual NLCD has no restrictions on the use of science products. Annual NLCD does ask that if you use the data as part of a publication or presentation that use the following citation below; however, it is not a requirement to use the data.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 2024, Annual NLCD Collection 1 Science Products: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P94UXNTS