2010 North American Land Cover 30-Meter

<div style='text-align:Left;'><div><div><p><span>The 2010 North American Land Cover 30-meter dataset was produced as part of the North American Land Change Monitoring </span></p><p><span> System (NALCMS), a trilateral effort between Natural Resources Canada, the United States Geological Survey, and three Mexican </span></p><p><span> organizations including the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía), </span></p><p><span> National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of the Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional Para el Conocimiento y Uso de la </span></p><p><span> Biodiversidad), and the National Forestry Commission of Mexico (Comisión Nacional Forestal). The collaboration is facilitated </span></p><p><span> by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an international organization created by the Canada, Mexico, and United States </span></p><p><span> governments under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation to promote environmental collaboration between the </span></p><p><span> three countries.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span> The general objective of NALCMS is to devise, through collective effort, a harmonized multi-scale land cover monitoring </span></p><p><span> approach which ensures high accuracy and consistency in monitoring land cover changes at the North American scale and </span></p><p><span> which meets each country’s specific requirements. </span></p><p><span /></p><p><span> This 30-meter dataset of North American Land Cover reflects land cover information for 2010 from Mexico and Canada and 2011 </span></p><p><span> for the United States. Each country developed its own classification method to identify Land Cover classes and then provided </span></p><p><span> an input layer to produce a continental Land Cover map across North America. Canada, Mexico, and the United States developed </span></p><p><span> their own 30-meter land cover products; see specific sections on data generation below.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span> The main inputs for image classification were 30-meter Landsat data. Image selection processes and reduction to specific </span></p><p><span> spectral bands varied among the countries due to study-site-specific requirements. While Canada selected most images from </span></p><p><span> the year 2010 with a few from 2009 and 2011, the United States employed mainly images from 2011. Mexico used all available </span></p><p><span> images from 2010.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span> In order to generate a seamless and consistent land cover map of North America, national maps were generated for Canada by </span></p><p><span> the CCRS; for Mexico by CONABIO, INEGI, and CONAFOR; and for the United States by the USGS. Each country chose their own</span></p><p><span> approaches, ancillary data, and land cover mapping methodologies to create national datasets. This North America dataset </span></p><p><span> was produced by combining the national land cover datasets.</span></p></div></div></div>