Our Livini; Ri'scurces — HobiJat Assessmeiils 



467 



At the federal level of government, there is a 

 clear need for developing comprehensive 

 and consistent land-cover and land-characteris- 

 tics information for the United States. Increased 

 attention to environmental research and plan- 

 ning that addresses spatial context and relation- 

 ships requires baseline land characteristics 

 across a range of spatial and temporal scales. 

 The demand for this information parallels 

 advances in computer and other technologies, 

 such as geographic information systems (CIS) 

 and remote sensing, which permit the process- 

 ing, analysis, and management of this type and 

 volume of data. 



To initiate this effort for the federal govern- 

 ment, four ecological and environmental 

 research and monitoring programs have formed 

 a pailnership with the U.S. Geological Survey's 

 (USGS) Earth Resources Observation System 

 ( EROS ) Data Center to design, develop, and test 

 a Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics 

 (MRLC) monitoring program. The overall 

 objective of MRLC is to develop a land-charac- 

 teristics monitoring system that provides a base- 

 line of multi-scale environmental characteristics 

 and mechanisms for monitoring, identifying, 

 and assessing environmental change. In addi- 

 tion, the MRLC program is developing a nation- 

 al land-cover data set based on Landsat 

 Thematic Mapper satellite imagery. Partners of 

 the MRLC program are described below. 



EPA: EMAP 



The Environmental Monitoring and 

 Assessment Program (EMAP). managed by the 

 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 

 Office of Research and Development, is a 

 research, monitoring, and assessment effort to 

 report on the condition of our nation's ecosys- 

 tems. The EMAP is developing and using eco- 

 logical indicators for wetlands, surface waters, 

 the Great Lakes, agroecosystems, arid ecosys- 

 tems, forests, and estuaries. For the EMAP. 

 land-cover information is critical to determine 

 sample locations, resource extent, and potential 

 human-caused stress. When fully implemented, 

 the EMAP will provide comparable, high-qual- 

 ity data on the condition of our nation's ecolog- 

 ical resources at regional and national scales. 



NBS: GAP 



The National Biological Service's (NBS's) 

 Gap Analysis Program (GAP) provides a 

 regional and national overview of the distribu- 

 tion and protection status of biological diversity 

 by producing comprehensive and synoptic bio- 

 geographic data. Analysis involves using GIS 

 technology to compare the distributions of 



vegetation and native vertebrate species with 

 land ownership and management. One of the 

 central questions GAP addresses is how well 

 native species are represented in areas managed 

 for their long-term sustainability. 



USGS: NAWQA 



The National Water Quality Assessment 

 (NAWQA) program of the USGS is designed to 

 describe the status and trends in the quality of 

 the nation's groundwater and surface-water 

 resources and to link these status and trends 

 with an understanding of the natural and human 

 factors that affect water quality. The program 

 integrates information about water quality at a 

 wide range of spatial scales, from local to 

 national, and focuses on water-quality condi- 

 tions that affect large areas of the nation or that 

 occur frequently within small areas. 



USGS: EROS Data Center 



The EROS Data Center is a data-manage- 

 ment, systems-development, and research cen- 

 ter of the USGS. Established in the eariy 1 970's 

 to receive, process, and distribute data from the 

 National Aeronautics and Space Administra- 

 tion's experimental Landsat satellites (Fig. 1), it 

 houses the world's largest collection of space 

 and aircraft imacerv of the Earth. It manaces 



Federal Data 

 Bases of Land 

 Character- 

 istics 



by 



Denice M. Shaw 



Environmental Protection 



Agency 



Michael Jennings 

 National Biological Service 



Fig. 1. Landsat Thematic Mapper image of Philadelpliia and New ^uik Citv. taken May 20. 1991. 



