Land Use/Land Cover - Cross-MSDI Relationships

The Land Use/Land Cover database relates to the following other MSDI framework themes:

• Wetlands—Wetland are a land cover category.  Currently, the wetlands theme is not complete statewide. As soon as it is complete, or as soon as specific wetland classes are complete (e.g., prairie potholes), it will be “burned in.”

• Hydrography—The hydrology theme is used to ensure accuracy of the “open water” land cover class.

• Imagery—Imagery is used for visual verification and for delineation/classification of specific land cover and land use classes (e.g., invasive riparian vegetation).

• Transportation—Land cover/land use is updated at least biennially with changes to the Transportation theme.

• Structures – Land cover/land use is updated at least biennially with changes to the structures theme.

Additionally, the Montana Natural Heritage Program interactive web map products rely on Land Cover as a base data set, as do all of our species predictive distribution models.