LCMAP products include ten land cover and land change datasets, among them primary and secondary land cover classes and confidence for each, annual land cover change, time of spectral change, change magnitude, and spectral stability period.
Click the links below to learn more about the LCMAP initiative.
FAQs
How are bats affected by wind turbines?
Dead bats are found beneath wind turbines all over the world. It’s estimated that tens to hundreds of thousands die at wind turbines each year in North America alone. Unfortunately, it’s not yet clear why this is happening. It’s possible that wind turbines interfere with seasonal migration and mating patterns in some species of bats. More than three quarters of the bat fatalities at wind turbines...
Why is it important to know the locations of wind turbines?
No publicly-available, national database of wind turbines existed prior to the creation of the USGS Windfarm mapper, which was replaced with the U.S. Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) in 2018. Knowing the location of individual turbines and their technical specifications creates new opportunities for research and improved siting and is important information for land and resource management. In...
Can wind turbines harm wildlife?
A key challenge facing the wind industry is the potential for turbines to adversely affect wild animals both directly, via collisions, as well as indirectly due to noise pollution, habitat loss, and reduced survival or reproduction. Among the most impacted wildlife are birds and bats, which by eating destructive insects provide billions of dollars of economic benefits to the country’s agricultural...
Education
LCMAP Did You Know?
Below you'll find answers to common questions about USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP).
Eyes on Earth Episode 40 – Landsat Collection 2
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 learn how a Collections strategy boosts the value of the Landsat archive.
LCMAP Change Stories: Outfitting the Ozarks
The meandering shoreline is the claim to fame for the Midwestern tourist oasis that is Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri.
The Missouri Division of Tourism’s website leads its page on the state’s most popular visitor destination by noting that the lake’s 1,100 miles of freshwater coast are more than even California has to offer.