Wisconsin Land Cover (WLC) data - "WISCLAND"

Formed in 1993, "WISCLAND" is the Wisconsin Initiative for Statewide Cooperation on Landscape Analysis and Data, a partnership of public and private organizations seeking to facilitate landscape GIS data development and analysis. The WISCLAND consortium was instrumental in the funding and implementation of a five-year work effort to interpret the state's land cover from satellite images. WISCLAND has been inactive since the late 1990s. For more information about WISCLAND, see Wisconsin State Cartographer's Office [exit DNR]

• WISCLAND Land Cover (WLC) data overview
• Metadata for WLC
• Sample WLC map
• Viewing WLC data
• Download land cover data & documentation

WISCLAND Land Cover (WLC) data overview

The WISCLAND land cover data are derived primarily from 1992 satellite imagery. After processing, the data have a minimum mapping unit of five acres, meaning that most land cover features five acres or larger can be resolved in the data. The classified land cover types can be summarized to indicate how much of each land cover is present over large areas of interest, such as counties or watersheds. More sophisticated analyses, such as assessing proximity or delineating land cover corridors, are possible with the appropriate application software.

The land cover data have been used by the DNR Bureau of Wildlife Management to estimate available range for deer in each deer management unit, as well as for estimation of elk range in Wisconsin. Other potential uses of the land cover data include watershed characterization to evaluate fisheries quality or support runoff estimation for flood analysis.

Information about the Upper Midwest Gap Analysis Program, including the "Upper Midwest Gap Analysis Program Image Processing Protocol," June 1998 [exit DNR], used in preparing the WISCLAND Land Cover data, are accessible via the USGS Environmental Management Technical Center (EMTC) [exit DNR].

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Metadata for WLC

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Sample WLC map

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Viewing WLC data

WLC data is available for viewing in the DNR WebView interactive mapping application. To find Land Cover data in WebView, click on the gold "layers" tab, then click once on the "Forests & Landcover" folder in the layerlist.

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Download WLC data & documentation

The following links are files on the DNR public FTP site. To restore the WLC data (full data model in ArcInfo Grid format), extract the zipfile (wlc_grid.zip) using WinZip [exit DNR]. Decompression of the zipfile will result in an ArcInfo Grid directory named "wlcgw930", and an accompanying "info" directory. Together these directories are just over 75 megabytes, uncompressed. Do NOT decompress the zipfile at a location where an info directory already exists, or information may be lost.