2005 Land Cover of North America at 250 meters - National Geospatial Data Asset (NGDA) Land Use Land Cover

This data set replaces the 2010 edition (Edition 1.0) of the 2005 Land Cover of North America. Following the release of the first 2005 land cover data, several errors were identified in the data, including both errors in labeling and misinterpretation of thematic classes. To correct the labeling errors, each country focused on its national territory and corrected the errors which it considered most critical or misleading. For the continental data sets (including surrounding water fringe) 17440830 pixels (4.33% of the area) changed in the update. The following national counts exclude the water fringe: Canada, 10223412 pixels changed (6.44%); Mexico, 141142 pixels changed (0.45%), and U.S., 6878656 pixels changed (4.54%). The countries worked together to produce a definitive list of land cover classifications for the 2005 data; this document is available for download from the same site as the data and is entitled: North American Land Cover Classifications (2005). Version 1 of the 2005 North American Land Cover data set was produced as part of the North American Land Change Monitoring System (NALCMS), a trilateral effort between the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, the United States Geological Survey, and three Mexican organizations including the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia), National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of the Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional Para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad) and the National Forestry Commission of Mexico (Comisión Nacional Forestal). The collaboration is facilitated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an international organization created by the Canada, Mexico, and United States governments under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation to promote environmental collaboration between the three countries. The general objective of NALCMS is to devise, through collective effort, a harmonized multi-scale land cover monitoring approach which ensures high accuracy and consistency in monitoring land cover changes at the North American scale and which meets each country’s specific requirements. The data set of 2005 Land Cover of North America at a resolution of 250 meters is the first step toward this goal. The initial data set used to generate land cover information over North America was produced by the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing from observations acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS/Terra). All seven land spectral bands were processed from Level 1 granules into top-of-atmosphere reflectance covering North America at a 250-meter spatial and 10-day temporal resolution. In order to generate a seamless and consistent land cover map of North America, national maps were generated for Canada by the CCRS; for Mexico by INEGI, CONABIO, and CONAFOR; and for the United States by the USGS. Each country used specific training data and land cover mapping methodologies to create national data sets. This North America data set was produced by combining the national land cover data sets.