Land Cover Summary Statistics for National Capital Region Park Units

This report documents the acquisition of source data, and calculation of land cover summary statistics datasets for ten National Park Service National Capital Region park units and three custom areas of analysis: Catoctin Mountain Park, Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, George Washington Memorial Parkway, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Manassas National Battlefield Park, Monocacy National Battlefield, National Capital Parks - East, Prince William Forest Park, Rock Creek Park, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, and the three custom areas of analysis - National Capital Parks - East: Oxon Cove Park, Oxon Hill Farm, Piscataway Park, National Capital Parks - East: Greenbelt Park and Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and National Capital Parks - East: DC and Suitland Parkway. The source data and land cover calculations are available for use within the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring Program. Land cover summary statistics datasets can be calculated for all geographic regions within the extent of the NPS; this report includes statistics calculated for the conterminous United States. The land cover summary statistics datasets are calculated from multiple sources, including Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium products in the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) and United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center products in the Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) raster dataset. These summary statistics calculate land cover at up to three classification scales: Level 1, modified Anderson Level 2, and Natural versus Converted land cover. The output land cover summary statistics datasets produced here for the ten National Capital Region park units and three custom areas of analysis utilize the most recent versions of the source datasets (NLCD and LCMAP). These land cover summary statistics datasets are used in the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program, including the NPS Environmental Settings Monitoring Protocol and may be used by networks and parks for additional efforts.