Data
Use the interface below to filter and download available NLCD products. Click (here) for NLCD Science Research Products which offer more comprehensive delineation of shrub and grass classes and information about change disturbance. For access to dynamic MRLC viewer applications and tools, click (here).
Dataset Type
Region
Time Period
RCMAP – Basemap (2016)
RCMAP base component products characterize the percentage of each 30-meter pixel in the Western United States covered by shrub, herbaceous, bare ground, litter, sagebrush, big sagebrush and annual herbaceous, along with estimating shrub height and sagebrush height. These products have been produced by USGS in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management. Component products are designed to be used individually or combined to support a broad variety of applications. Please note these new Revised (071520) rangeland products will differ from the first generation of circa 2016 fractional cover maps, a more aggressive masking of tree canopy cover was applied to each rangeland component. Specifically, we have lowered the tree canopy cover threshold for exclusion from 40 to 25%. For pixels with 1-25% tree canopy cover we ensured that our primary components (shrub, herbaceous, litter, and bare ground) cover summed to 100% when added with the tree canopy. And, for the secondary components (sagebrush, big sagebrush, sagebrush height and shrub height) we reconciled to the primary component (shrub), excluding any pinyon-juniper woodlands. (Read More)
RCMAP - Time-Series - Trends
Currently available trends statistics are for the 1985-2021 time-series. The RCMAP product suite consists of nine fractional components: annual herbaceous, bare ground, herbaceous, litter, non-sagebrush shrub, perennial herbaceous, tree, sagebrush and shrub, rule-based error maps, and the temporal trends of each. Data characterize the percentage of each 30-meter pixel in the Western United States covered by each component for each year from 1985-2021 - providing change information for 35 years (imagery for 2012 was unavailable). Because of file size limitations, individual component products are packaged in three historic intervals including 1985-1995, 1996-2006, and 2007-2021. Trend analysis for each component is also available as a zip file for the full 1985-2021 period to help users understand the magnitude of change. (Read More)
RCMAP - Future Projections - 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s
RCMAP projected cover products characterize the fractional (i.e. percentage) cover of shrub, herbaceous, bare ground, litter, sagebrush, and annual herbaceous in each 30-meter pixel in the Western United States. Projected data include three time periods (2020s, 2050s, and 2080s) and two climate scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways [RCP] 4.5 and 8.5). Component cover were harmonized so that the sum of bare ground, shrub, herbaceous, and litter cover adds to ~100% and secondary components sagebrush and annual herbaceous cover were harmonized to their respective primary components of shrub and herbaceous cover, (so their cover could not be greater than their primary component). These products have been produced by USGS in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management. Component products are designed to be used individually or combined to support a broad variety of applications. Data are packaged by time-period and climate scenarios (six). Please note that some suspect increases in sagebrush cover are projected in the Southern Great Basin and Southern Colorado Plateau, which we interpret as model error. We have developed a mask (see below) to apply to the future sagebrush cover layers. Masked areas meet three criteria: 1) they are within the sagebrush biome (Jeffries and Finn 2019), 2) within the following EPA level 3 ecoregions: Arizona/New Mexico Mountains, Arizona/New Mexico Plateau (excluding the San Luis Valley from the mask), Colorado Plateaus (excluding the Uinta Basin from the mask), Mojave Basin and Range, and Sonoran Basin and Range, and 3) have a maximum of 0% sagebrush cover observed over the 1985-2020 RCMAP time-series. (Read More)
Ecological Potential
Rangeland Ecological Potential - Component Cover, Cover Departure, and Vegetation States. Ecological Potential rangeland fractional cover data products represent the potential cover given the most productive, least disturbed, portion of the 1985-2020 Landsat archive. Models used to predict Ecological Potential cover were trained on ecologically intact sites where annual herbaceous cover is low, no known disturbance or land treatment has occurred over the study period, and bare ground cover is relatively lower than expectations (Read More)
