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Ground sample data were collected for a land cover database and raster map that portray 159 vegetation classes at 1 km2 resolution for the conterminous United States. Locations for 3,500 1 km2 ground sample plots were selected randomly across the United States. The number of plots representing each vegetation class was weighted by the proportionate coverage of each vegetation class. Field data collected for 2,560 of these plots included dominant vegetation species; coverage, height, and diameter estimates of major tree species; coverage, depth, and density estimates for shrubs and grasses; and photographs of the sample plots. These data were compared to vegetation labels assigned in the USGS, EROS Data Center's Land Cover Characteristics (LCC) database. The vegetation types were comparable in most cases, but the ground data provided labels ordered according to decreasing vegetation frequency. A formal accuracy assessment of the LCC map was not attempted. All data are available on a CD-ROM from the EROS Data Center.
This international symposium on theory and techniques for assessing the accuracy of spatial data and spatial analyses included more than ninety presentations by representatives from government, academic, and private institutions in over twenty countries throughout the world. To encourage interactions across disciplines, presentations in the general subject areas of spatial statistics, geographic information systems, remote sensing, and multidisciplinary approaches were intermixed throughout the three days of sessions.
Most environmental studies are based upon data collected at fine spatial scales plots, sediments, cores, etc.. Furthermore, temporal scales of these studies have been relatively short days, weeks, months and few studies have exceeded three years duration the typical funding cycle.; Despite this history, environmental scientists are now being called upon to extrapolate findings from "plot-level" studies to broader spatial scales and from short-term studies to longer temporal scales, up to decades for questions related to long-term processes such as global warming and the rise in sea level.; The complex questions being addressed internationally require that scientists take advantage of new tec...
Fitzsimmons "examines the science, philosophy, and law of ecosystems management and shows how efforts to make federal protection of ecosystems the centerpiece of national environmental policy are driven by religious veneration of Mother Earth wrapped in a veil of weak science."