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Land Cover Data for Central Nebraska, 1991, Classified from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper Imagery -- Path-31, Row-31 Quadrilateral

By Ronald B. Zelt and Jennifer B. Sharpe
ABSTRACT:
The Multi-Resolution Land Characterization (MRLC) consortium, made up of representatives from five Federal programs, cooperated to select and purchase Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) image data for the conterminous U.S. In addition, the MRLC consortium cooperated with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center to develop and implement a procedure for preprocessing, georeferencing, and spectrally analyzing these data. Landsat TM data for the Path-31, Row-31 Quadrilateral (roughly, lat 40°47' to 42°15'N, long 99°20' to 102°07'W.) were collected on July 14, 1991, and processed according to MRLC protocols using an unsupervised multi-variate cluster analysis to produce an image data set consisting of 240 unlabeled categories or clusters. The clusters were assigned to land-cover classes within a heirarchical classification system developed for a USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) study of the Central Nebraska Basins. The Central Nebraska Basins include the area drained by the Platte River between the confluence of the North Platte and South Platte Rivers and the mouth of the Platte River. The report contains interpreted image data for the 23,500-km² part of the Path-31, Row-31 Quadrilateral that is within the Central Nebraska Basins study unit. The data set includes a single-band, 16-bit raster array in which each grid cell (pixel) contains a coded value that incorporates both the original cluster number and a stratum number corresponding to one of the environmental settings of Central Nebraska that were used to spatially stratify the clusters. Data encoding the assigned land-cover class for each grid-cell code are included in tabular form.

About 91 percent of the data set was interpreted as grass covered, and about 7 percent as cropland and pasture. Mixed vegetation (about 1 percent) and other minor land-cover classes account for the remainder of the data set. The classification accuracy of the data set has not been quantitatively assessed, but comparisons with some available land-cover observations from 1993-94 were tabulated.

DESCRIPTORS: Nebraska, Land Cover


CITATION:
Zelt, R.B., and Sharpe, J.B., 2000, Land Cover Data for Central Nebraska, 1991, Classified from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper Imagery -- Path-31, Row-31 Quadrilateral: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 96-323, compact disc.


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