Annual NLCD Science Product User Guide
This document describes the relevant characteristics of the Annual NLCD, Collection 1 Science Products to facilitate their use in the land cover remote sensing community.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)’s Land Cover program has leveraged methodologies from legacy land cover projects - National Land Cover Database (NLCD) and Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) - together with modern innovations in geospatial deep learning technologies to create the next generation of land cover and land change information. The product suite is called, “Annual NLCD” and includes six annual products that represent land cover and surface change characteristics of the U.S.:
- Land Cover
- Land Cover Change
- Land Cover Confidence
- Fractional Impervious Surface
- Impervious Descriptor
- Spectral Change Day of Year
These land cover science algorithms harness the remotely sensed Landsat data record to provide the land surface change information needed by scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers. Annual NLCD uses a modernized, integrated approach to map, monitor, synthesize, and understand the complexities of land use, cover, and condition change. With this first release - Annual NLCD, Collection 1.0 - the six products mentioned above are available for the Conterminous U.S. for 1985 – 2023.
Basic foundational elements of Annual NLCD Collection 1 include:
- Landsat Collection 2 U.S. Analysis Ready Data (ARD)
- Land surface change and land cover data
- Independent reference data for validation and area estimation
- Scenario-driven projections of future land use and land cover extents and patterns
- Assessments focused on land change processes, characteristics, and consequences
Back to the Annual NLCD landing page.
Multimedia associated with the Annual NLCD Science Product User Guide
This document describes the relevant characteristics of the Annual NLCD, Collection 1 Science Products to facilitate their use in the land cover remote sensing community.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)’s Land Cover program has leveraged methodologies from legacy land cover projects - National Land Cover Database (NLCD) and Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) - together with modern innovations in geospatial deep learning technologies to create the next generation of land cover and land change information. The product suite is called, “Annual NLCD” and includes six annual products that represent land cover and surface change characteristics of the U.S.:
- Land Cover
- Land Cover Change
- Land Cover Confidence
- Fractional Impervious Surface
- Impervious Descriptor
- Spectral Change Day of Year
These land cover science algorithms harness the remotely sensed Landsat data record to provide the land surface change information needed by scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers. Annual NLCD uses a modernized, integrated approach to map, monitor, synthesize, and understand the complexities of land use, cover, and condition change. With this first release - Annual NLCD, Collection 1.0 - the six products mentioned above are available for the Conterminous U.S. for 1985 – 2023.
Basic foundational elements of Annual NLCD Collection 1 include:
- Landsat Collection 2 U.S. Analysis Ready Data (ARD)
- Land surface change and land cover data
- Independent reference data for validation and area estimation
- Scenario-driven projections of future land use and land cover extents and patterns
- Assessments focused on land change processes, characteristics, and consequences
Back to the Annual NLCD landing page.
Multimedia associated with the Annual NLCD Science Product User Guide