North American Landscape Characterization

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).