As part of RCMAP, The
Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection Project, the U.S.
Geological Survey, in collaboration with the BLM, has produced
annual maps of fractional, that is to say, percentage component
cover for 1985 through 2023
RCMAP components include annual herbaceous, perennial herbaceous,
total herbaceous, sagebrush, non-sagebrush shrub, total
shrub, litter., bare ground, and tree canopy cover.
These components are designed to capture subtle changes related to climate,
land management practices and other disturbances.
Many of these changes can evolve over long time periods and have varying impacts
to RCMAP components, necessitating the long-term perspective.
Land managers and scientists can use annual fractional cover
maps to monitor changes to vegetation composition,
evaluate past management practices, target future improvements,
determine locations of critical wildlife habitat, assess effects of climate change
and interannual variation, and appraise landscape health and fragmentation.
RCMAP offers data to users through a number of means,
but the primary portal for casual exploration, generating reports
and downloading data is the MRLC Rangelands Viewer at mrlc.gov.
MRLC, The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium,
Is a collaboration of several federal partners
and also hosts NLCD data and Exotic Annual Grass data.
Clicking on the data and then downloads menu, we see a number of options to select
data by type, region and time period
specific to RCMAP are the data set types ecological potential,
future projections, RCMAP basemap, time-series trends,
and the flagship time-series cover products, which we focus on here.
Users can toggle data from various time-periods to select those of interest.
After clicking on the RCMAP - time-series cover, users can view
data that are available for download by component and by time-period.
Under “More,”
users can find an overview of what is included in that component,
metadata, citation,
publications, and map services
For each link, data
from a multi-year bundle for a single component will be downloaded.
Users should note that each download package is zipped
and about 20GB.
The MRLC Rangelands
Viewer offers several means to view RCMAP data.
Users can open multiple windows
viewing different components or time periods simultaneously.
These can be expanded, minimized, or rearranged.
The viewer defaults to the most recent year of data
To change the year, select the calendar icon in the upper right
Click the icon to the right of the calendar to view a legend.
In the lower left, a number of vector layers are available for context,
including watersheds, BLM, USFS pastures and allotments, and more.
Toggling one of these
layers on enables the graph tool, which allows users to visualize
the temporal trends of each component within that feature.
On the plot,
users can turn the component on or off by clicking on the legend entry.
Adjust the time period plotting range by using the slider.
Finally, plots
can be downloaded as a graphic or data format.
Next, users can draw a custom polygon to download data
The max size is 350,000km².
Alternatively, users
can upload their own shapefile or GeoJSON to download data.
Next, users can select the layers and time period they wish to download,
which will be emailed to the supplied email address.
While the message warns the download may take up to 24 hours,
typically the data are available within ten minutes.
In the download package, users will find a .tif raster
for each selected year and component and a gif video demonstrating
the temporal patterns of change in each selected component.
Several additional means of data access are possible,
like the Web Map Service, WMS, and Web Coverage Service,
WCS, within MRLC .
With WMS and WCS,
users can visualize RCMAP data in GIS without downloading.
Each component has its own WMC and WCS link.
Instructions to add the service to Arc Pro and QGis are provided as well.
For power users of the data, RCMAP is available in Google
Earth Engine, Climate Engine and on AWS.