The enactment of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980 imposed mandates on all major land management agencies in Alaska to prepare comprehensive resource and management plans to assess wildlife habitat, oil and gas exploration and development, wild and scenic river, land disposals, timber production, and archaeological and cultural resources, To meet these objective, the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) has embarked on a plan to classify land cover for the entire State of Alaska using Landsat digital data. the USGS, in cooperation with other agencies, has completely Landsat-derived land use and land cover classification of 115 million acres for the State of Alaska. With this work as a substantial foundation, the USGS has prepared a comprehensive plan for classifying the remaining areas of Alaska. The development of this program will lead to a complete interim land use and land cover classification system for Alaska and provide for the dissemination of map products, statistics, and acreage summaries for all areas of Alaska at 1:250,000 scale. It also allows for the dissemination of Landsat digital data for those areas.
