Abstract
The landscape of the northeastern United States is a complex mixture of forest, agriculture, and development. Many urgent social and environmental issues require spatially-referenced information on land-use, a need potentially met by the National Land-Cover Data (NLGD). NL C D non-site-specific accuracy from 1992 and 2001 was assessed by comparing county proportions of cropland and agricultural grassland (pasturelhay) area to those recorded in the USDA Census of Agriculture (COA) for 1992 and 2002. Estimates of total agricultural area corresponded closely (r 2 = 0.9 1 for 1 992; 0.8 5 for 2001/2), but NLCD performed poorly at distinguishing between cropland and grassland (r 2 = 0.64 and 0.80 for cropland in 1992 and 2001; 0.50 and 0.44 for grassland in those years). High forest cover reduced accuracy. Landscape complexity and patch size may impede classification accuracy. Accuracy varied greatly by state, even within a single mapping region. The NL C D is the best available source of spatial land-cover, but may not be suitable for applications requiring agricultural subclass data.
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