The Annapolis, Maryland nonprofit Chesapeake Conservancy and the Chesapeake Bay Program, a regional partnership working to protect the Chesapeake Bay, have published the “Chesapeake Bay High-Resolution Land Cover Project,” a high-resolution dataset of land cover around the bay that can help conservationists better understand how pollution affects the bay. The dataset combines aerial imagery data from several states and the U.S. Department of Agriculture with elevation data to cover 100,000 square miles with a one-by-one meter resolution. Unlike previously available geospatial datasets, this dataset has a high enough resolution to allow analysts to annotate features of land cover, such as trees and buildings, even when they are very small, such as urban tree cover or minor roads.
Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.