National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2021 Products

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in partnership with several federal agencies, has now developed and released seven National Land Cover Database (NLCD) products: NLCD 1992, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2019, and 2021. Beginning with the 2016 release, land cover products were created for two-to-three-year intervals between 2001 and the most recent year. These products provide spatially explicit and reliable information on the Nation’s land cover and land cover change. NLCD continues to provide innovative, consistent, and robust methodologies for production of a multi-temporal land cover and land cover change database. The NLCD 2021 release is update based, so the Land Cover and Impervious Surface products released in 2019 are unchanged and used directly with NLCD 2021 for change analysis though the NLCD timespan. Science products and the change index are updated and will need to be reacquired to contain the additional 2021 change. These new products use a streamlined compositing process for assembling and preprocessing Landsat imagery and geospatial ancillary datasets; a temporally, spectrally, and spatially integrated land cover change analysis strategy; a theme-based post-classification protocol for generating land cover and change products; a continuous fields biophysical parameters modeling method; and a scripted operational system. The overall accuracy of the 2019 Level I land cover was 91%. Results from this study confirm the robustness of this comprehensive and highly automated procedure for NLCD 2021 operational mapping (see https://doi.org/10.1080/15481603.2023.2181143 for the latest accuracy assessment publication). Questions about the NLCD 2021 land cover product can be directed to the NLCD 2021 land cover mapping team at USGS EROS, Sioux Falls, SD (605) 594-6151 or mrlc@usgs.gov. See included spatial metadata for more details.

Please see National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2019 Products (ver. 2.0, June 2021) - ScienceBase-Catalog for the 2019 release of NLCD which is used with the 2021 release for comparisons through the years.
Also refer to the larger NLCD Community page for all things NLCD related National Land Cover Database (NLCD) - ScienceBase-Catalog.