2020 Systemic Land Cover Data, Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) program, through its Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) element, collected aerial imagery of the systemic Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) during the summer of 2020. A Land Cover/Land Use (LCU) spatial database was developed based on the 2020 aerial imagery, which adds a fourth systemic-wide database to the existing 1989, 2000, and 2010/11 LCU databases. While a crosswalk was used to update the 1989 LCU database (originally developed using a different classification system), the 2000, 2010/11, and 2020 LCU databases share the same classification, making them directly comparable from a classification standpoint. Furthermore, protocols in addition to standard mapping methods were explored to increase the utility of the 2020 UMRS LCU database for research monitoring when compared to the 2010/11 UMRS LCU database. These map protocols aimed to reflect “true” spatial and temporal changes in vegetation polygons and classification rather than changes due to differences in image interpretation or image spatial positioning.