The Pacific Northwest Regional Gap Analysis Project Final Report on Land Cover Mapping Methods MRLC Mapzones 2 and 7

Abstract

This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses land cover map development. It begins by providing background information on the regional division of labor and the regional land cover legend. It then focuses on our land cover mapping methods, including a description of data sources, the land cover modeling approach, and the general flow of the mapping process. It concludes with a description of the resulting land cover map product. The second section describes the process of validating the land cover product. Background information on our approach is presented along with descriptions of the methods and results of the land cover product validation. The final section provides a discussion of the land cover mapping experience in general. In this section we discuss some of the “lessons learned” from the regional mapping effort with hopes that future mapping efforts of this nature will benefit from our experience.