State land-cover map helps planners, scientists, policy makers and educators

"Land Cover of Nebraska" will help land managers, community and regional planners, scientists, policy makers and educators make better-informed decisions about a variety of complex natural resource issues, said Milda Vaitkus, UNL geographic information systems specialist.

The map records the extent, representation and distribution of the state's vegetation groups. The map can be used to analyze wildlife habitat, generally, and specifically, to find corridors that connect natural resource management or protected areas with one another and to determine where key vegetation communities occur in relation to existing conservation lands, she explained.

Produced by the UNL Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies, part of the School of Natural Resources, the map is a product of the Nebraska Gap Analysis Program under the U.S. Geological Survey.

"The purpose of the national Gap Analysis Program, or GAP, is to provide a broad level of geographic information about the habitats of ordinary, not threatened or endangered, species," added Vaitkus.

GAP identifies the degree to which native animal species and natural plant communities are represented in the current mix of conservation lands. Those species and communities not adequately represented in the network of conservation lands constitute gaps, she said.

CALMIT researchers used computer-aided analysis of satellite images to identify and classify the major types of grassland, cropland, forest and urban areas, explained CALMIT Associate Director James Merchant. The map was created by CALMIT staff and students working under geoscientist Geoff Henebry. The map has a scale of 1:800,000 and is 24 x 38 inches.

CALMIT is a center for GIS and remote sensing -- satellite and aerial imagery -- that provides training in computer-based tools for analyzing geospatial information.