USGS--Landuse
USGS Land Use and Land
Cover Data
The Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) data files describe the vegetation, water, natural
surface, and cultural features on the land surface. The United States Geological Survey
(USGS) provides these data sets and associated maps as a part of its National Mapping
Program. The LULC mapping program is designed so that standard topographic maps of a scale
of 1:250,000 can be used for compilation and organization of the land use and land cover
data. In some cases, such as Hawaii, 1:100,000 scale maps are also used.
The EMSI tipsheet page discusses how to obtain USGS land use coverages and how to convert them from their current GIRAS format into a useable format for WMS. Note: WMS version 6.0 is capable of directly reading GIRAS data. Again, the EPA Basin data is already in shapefile format and thus readily available for use in WMS. http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html