Global Land Cover Characterization Program

The Global Land Cover Characterization Project was established to meet science data requirements identified by the International Geosphere and Biosphere Programme (IGBP), and the U. S. Global Change Research Program. The overall goal is to produce flexible large-area land cover databases to meet evolving requirements of the earth science research community.

The project was implemented by the United States Geological Survey/EROS Data Center (EDC), the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), and the Joint Research (JRC) of European Commission. This effort is part of the National Aeronautic's and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing System Pathfinder Program.

Funding for the project was provided by the USGS, NASA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Forest Service (USFS) , and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The data base has been adopted by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Data and Information System office (IGBP-DIS) to fill its requirement for a global 1-km land cover data set.

[Summary provided by the USGS.]

Data and Resources

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Metadata in Biological Data Profile format.
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Global Land Cover Characterization Documentation.
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Global Land Cover Characterization Program - Links.
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Additional Info

Field	Value
Maintainer	TYLER STEVENS
Last Updated	February 19, 2025, 09:46 (UTC)
Created	February 19, 2025, 09:46 (UTC)
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_@context	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_@id	https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
citation	USGS. 1997-11-01. Global Land Cover Characterization Program. Version 1.2. Archived by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government, USGS. http://landcover.usgs.gov/glcc/.
creator	USGS
harvest_object_id	0dc5d83d-2157-45f8-861b-c777d2aad9fb
harvest_source_id	b37e5849-07d2-41cd-8bb6-c6e83fc98f2d
harvest_source_title	DNG Legacy Data
identifier	C1220566586-USGS_LTA
issued	1992-04-01
landingPage	https://cmr.earthdata.nasa.gov:443/search/concepts/C1220566586-USGS_LTA.html
language	{en-US}
metadata_type	geospatial
modified	1993-03-01
programCode	{026:001}
publisher	DOI/USGS/EROS
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	19270ee6ba720e6e5e1f0085454b7f36615d752d6ee0b0e73edd34942876857c
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	-180.0 -90.0 180.0 90.0
temporal	1992-04-01T00:00:00Z/1993-03-01T23:59:59.999Z
theme	{LCCP,geospatial}