Linking remote‐sensing estimates of land cover and census statistics on land use to produce maps of land use of the conterminous United States

Abstract

Human use of the land has a large effect on the structure of terrestrial ecosystems and the dynamics of biogeochemical cycles. For this reason, terrestrial ecosystem and biogeochemistry models require moderate resolution (e.g., ≤0.5°) information on land use in order to make realistic predictions. Few such data sets currently exist. To create a land use data set of sufficient resolution, we developed models relating land cover data derived from optical remote sensing and a census database on land use for the conterminous United States. The land cover product used was from the International Geosphere‐Biosphere Programme DISCover global product, derived from 1 km advanced very high resolution radiometer imagery, with 16 land cover classes. Land use data at state‐level resolution came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Major Land Uses database, aggregated into four general land use categories: Cropland, Pasture/Range, Forest, and Other. We developed and applied models relating these data sets to generate maps of land use in 1992 for the conterminous United States at 0.5° spatial resolution.