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    • North American Landscape Characterization

    Metadata Updated: March 13, 2026

    The North American Landscape Characterization (NALC) project is a component of the Landsat Pathfinder Program, which is part of a larger Pathfinder Program initiated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1989. The NALC project is a cooperative effort between NASA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Geological Survey to make Landsat data available to the widest possible user community for scientific research and for the general public interest. The objectives of the NALC project are to develop standardized remotely sensed data sets and analysis methods in support of investigations of changes in land cover, to develop inventories of terrestrial carbon stocks, to assess carbon cycling dynamics, and to map terrestrial sources of greenhouse gas (CO, CO2, CH4, and N2) emissions. The NALC data set is comprised of hundreds of triplicates (i.e., multispectral scanner (MSS) data acquired in the years 1973, 1986, and 1991 plus or minus 1 year, thus, the name triplicate). The NALC triplicates also include digital elevation model data. The specific temporal windows vary for geographical regions based on the seasonal characteristics of the vegetation cover. In accordance with the Landsat Pathfinder Program concept, the Pathfinder basic data sets are to be comprised of data which have had systematic radiometric and systematic geometric corrections applied to them. The NALC triplicates, however, are precision corrected for geocoding purposes.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026
    Publisher DOI/USGS/EROS
    Maintainer
    Identifier C1220566433-USGS_LTA
    Data First Published 1972-07-23
    Language en-US
    Data Last Modified 2025-03-31
    Category ELTA, geospatial
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 1e23edc4-1e91-40f2-b4f0-afe0f25ad634
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://cmr.earthdata.nasa.gov:443/search/concepts/C1220566433-USGS_LTA.html
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial -175.0 5.0 -60.0 72.0
    Program Code 026:001
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 1afd612a0537ba882345c6d7af50b247ba9db35f2256771a9a52622a13583728
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 1972-07-23T00:00:00Z/1992-12-31T23:59:59.999Z

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