Land Cover

The importance of sea-level rise in shaping coastal landscapes is well recognized within the earth science community, but as with many natural hazards, communicating the risks associated with sea-level rise remains a challenge.

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.

EROS is central to the creation of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), which is updated every two to three years and stands as the definitive land cover database for the United States.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) is an interagency program whose goal is to consistently map the burn severity and extent of large fires across all lands of the United States from 1984 to present. This includes all fires 1,000 acres or greater in the western United States and 500 acres or greater in the eastern Unites States. The extent of coverage includes the continental U.S., Alaska...

EROS, alongside the USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC), offers rapid delivery of satellite imagery in the form of Burned Area Reflectance Classifications (BARC) and other data to the Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) program.

Wetlands purify and store our water, process carbon and nutrients and serve a crucial role in the life cycle of a wide range of flora and fauna. Wetland disturbance from urban development or agriculture can alter the natural flow of runoff and increase the risk for flooding.

USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center provide tools that allow user to view, search, query, download, and utilize onlne interfaces for available remote sensing and geospatial data.

There are no restrictions on the use of data received from the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center or NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), unless expressly identified prior to or at the time of receipt. Depending on the product source, we request that the following statements be used when citing, copying, or reprinting data:

Explore the world’s largest civilian collection of images of the Earth’s surface. Find satellite images and data, aerial photography, elevation and land cover datasets, digitized maps, and our Image Gallery collections.

Geospatially tagged ground-based landscape photographs from across the United States. Images initially served as a research tool to aid Landsat-derived land-use/land-cover analyses and assessments (1999-2009).

The National Atlas of the United States products are specialized geospatial, geostatistical, and thematic maps for the United States in digital raster and/or vector format.

Digital Line Graphs (DLGs) are digital vector representations of cartographic information derived from USGS maps and related sources.