Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium | Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium

The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) consortium is a group of federal agencies who coordinate and generate consistent and relevant land cover information at the national scale for a wide variety of environmental, land management, and modeling applications. The creation of this consortium has resulted in the mapping of the lower 48 United States, Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico into a comprehensive land cover product termed, the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), from decadal Landsat satellite imagery and other supplementary datasets.

MRLC hosts land cover and land condition data from various sources, including NLCD and Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP) time-series, Ecological Potential, and projections of future fractional rangeland components. Data are offered for download, as WMS services, and in applications.

Direct Product Partners

Bureau of Land Management

LANDFIRE

National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

United States Forest Service

United States Geological Survey

Supporting Partners

National Park Service

United States Department of Agriculture

United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Fish and Wildlife Service

RCMAP 1985-2021 Fractional Component Time-Series Now Available

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with the MRLC consortium and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), is pleased to announce the availability of a new generation of Rangeland, Condition, Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (RCMAP) fractional component data spanning a 1985-2021 time-series. The new time-series includes yearly cover predictions for 9 components: shrub, sagebrush, non-sagebrush shrub, herbaceous, annual herbaceous, perennial herbaceous, litter, bare ground, and new to this version, tree cover. Trends statistics of the new time-series will be available by Jan 2023. Data are available for download and on the rangelands viewer. The new generation of data update previously released 1985-2020 RCMAP data and are not designed to be backwards compatible (1985-2020 cover predictions are different between versions). While users are encouraged to use the newest generation of data, the previous versions of the time-series data are archived.

NLCD 2019 Now Available

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a new generation of National Land Cover Database (NLCD) products named NLCD 2019 for the conterminous U.S. NLCD 2019 contains 34 different land cover products characterizing land cover and land cover change across 8 epochs from 2001-2019. Products include urban imperviousness and urban imperviousness change updated to match all landcover epochs; tree canopy and tree canopy change across 2 epochs from 2011-2016, with a 2019 and 2021 canopy suite set to be released in the next year; and RCMAP rangeland fractional component data including a 1985-2020 time-series, projections of future component cover through the 2080s, and Ecological Potential component cover. Data are available on this website either as prepackaged products or custom product areas can be interactively chosen using the viewer. NLCD 2019 represents the most comprehensive land cover database ever produced by the USGS and was specifically developed to meet the rapidly growing demand for land cover change data. NLCD is coordinated through the 10-member Multi Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC), a two decades-long interagency federal government collaboration that has proved an exemplary model of cooperation among federal agencies to combine resources to provide digital land cover information for the Nation.

NLCD 2019 now offers land cover for years 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2019, and impervious surface and impervious descriptor products now updated to match each date of land cover. These products update all previously released versions of landcover and impervious products for CONUS (NLCD 2001, NLCD 2006, NLCD 2011, NLCD 2016) and are not directly comparable to previous products. NLCD 2019 land cover and impervious surface product versions of previous dates must be downloaded for proper comparison. Also included with thelLand cover is the NLCD Land Cover Change Index. This index provides a simple and comprehensive way to visualize change from all 8 dates of land cover in a single layer. The change index was designed to assist NLCD users to understand complex land cover change with a single product. NLCD 2019 also offers an impervious surface descriptor product that identifies the type of each impervious surface pixel. This product identifies types of roads, wind tower sites, building locations, and energy production sites to allow deeper analysis of developed features.

CONUS Land Cover

CONUS Imperviousness

Interactive Viewer

RCMAP 1985-2021 Fractional Component Time-Series Now Available

Published Dec 01, 2022

View Products

Release of RCMAP Time-Series Trends Statistics

Published Aug 02, 2021

RCMAP has released temporal trends for the 1985-2020 fractional component cover time-series. Temporal patterns in each RCMAP component were evaluated with two approaches, 1) linear trends and 2) a structural change method using a temporal moving window to detect “breaks” and “stable states” in pixel values. The structural change method partitions the time-series into segments of similar slope values, with statistically significant break-points indicating perturbations to the prior trajectory. We provide the following statistics: 1) for each component, each year, the presence/absence of breaks, 2) the slope, p-value, and standard error of the segment occurring in each year, 3) the overall model R2 (quality of model fit to the temporal profile), and 4) an index, Total Change Intensity, reflecting the total amount of change occurring across components in that pixel.

View Products

Enhanced Visualization and Analysis (EVA) Tool Now Available

Published Mar 25, 2021

The MRLC Consortium, in collaboration with NOAA and the USGS, is pleased to release version 2 of the Enhanced Visualization and Analysis (EVA) tool. This tool provides users with detailed county statistics for any two NLCD landcover dates to support quick and powerful change analyses. This tool was originally developed by NOAA and shared through the consortium with custom adaptations for NLCD.

Open EVA