| GAP
Bulletin Number 5 June 1996 |
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| GAP
Bulletin Number 5 June 1996 |
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MRLC Update and New Rules for TM Access: The Landsat Program Management Agreement Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium In 1993, the Gap Analysis Program (GAP), together with four other federal programs, formed the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) to create a venue for addressing issues related to land cover mapping. In 1995, the MRLC was formally recognized via a Memorandum of Agreement between the partner programs' parent agencies, including the National Biological Service (NBS), Geological Survey (USGS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The goals of the MRLC include the generation of a flexible land characteristics database for the conterminous United States that meets the diverse needs of many users. The MRLC partners shared common requirements for a source of satellite data, preprocessing, spectral clustering, and ancillary data acquisition as well as data management, archiving, and distribution. The MRLC partners could not afford to purchase the data from the Earth Observation Satellite Company (EOSAT) individually. Through the MRLC partnership, the joint purchase of Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery resulted in a direct saving of 4 million dollars with subsequent savings for image processing and data management, totaling 26 million dollars. USGS's EROS Data Center (EDC), a partner in the MRLC, is responsible for the execution of image processing and database management. In February 1996, EDC completed processing the MRLC TM image data. Metadata for the TM imagery can be viewed using USGS's Global Land Information System (GLIS) which can be accessed via the MRLC home page (see "Multi-Resolution Land Characterization Consortium" on the Web at http://www.epa.gov/docs/grd/mrlc). Future TM imagery purchases by the MRLC partner programs will be directed toward expanding the multitemporal aspect of the original TM database and selecting satellite imagery for the "next generation" MRLC data set. In order to build a flexible national land cover database of multiple spatial and temporal resolutions, the MRLC is pursuing better integration of the land cover projects that are being carried out by its members. Recently, MRLC completed a classified land cover mosaic encompassing the states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Produced by USGS's EROS Data Center using the MRLC TM imagery, this regionally-based land cover has 12 thematic classes. Our goal is to link this thematically coarser land cover data set with a seamless GAP vegetation layer for the mid-Atlantic states. This is a pilot project, and other regional land cover projects are planned. This thematically coarser but spatially more extensive land cover data set illustrates the importance for the GAP state projects throughout the country to agree on methodologies to successfully "edge-match" their land cover data with those of their neighboring states. The regional land coverages, linked with the GAP vegetation data, will be combined to form seamless multiresolution land cover data sets for the conterminous United States. Landsat Program Management Agreement The MRLC data purchase from EOSAT Corp. was bound by the terms and conditions of the original 1993 agreement. These terms and conditions limited MRLC TM data access to the partner programs and their cooperators. However, under the June 30, 1995 Landsat Program Management (LPM) Agreement between EOSAT, NASA, NOAA, and USGS, the original terms of the MRLC data purchase have become less stringent. This new agreement expands the availability of the MRLC Landsat data sets (original raw data from EOSAT and the terrain-corrected data) beyond the partner programs if certain conditions outlined below are met. The LPM Agreement established the U.S. Government and Affiliated User (USGAU) purchaser group with EOSAT. The agreement defines the USGAU as "U.S. Government agencies; U.S. Government contractors; researchers involved with the U.S. Global Change Research Program and its international counterpart program; and other researchers and international entities that have signed with the U.S. Government a cooperative agreement involving the use of Landsat data for noncommercial purposes." Under the 1995 agreement, the USGAU will have unrestricted rights to reproduce and redistribute, within the USGAU, all unenhanced Landsat TM data purchased by the USGAU for noncommercial use, which includes future and previously purchased data by the USGAU, including the MRLC data. This is taken to mean that all federal agency programs and their affiliates now have access to both the original 7-band data as well as the preprocessed data. Users must pay for the cost of reproducing the data at the EROS Data Center, which is about $70 per scene. While the MRLC TM database is not a classified land cover product, it is a data set that many programs are utilizing to work on land cover throughout the country. Expanding the availability to other qualified users will further efforts to develop consistent approaches to land cover classification and accuracy assessment and lead to establishing a framework for integrating multiresolution data sets into a national database structure. For additional information about eligibility under the USGAU and the availability of the MRLC TM image data, contact Kent Hegge, EROS Data Center, at (605) 594-6976 or hegge@edcserver1.cr.usgs.gov. Pete Campbell |