Data Outreach

Land Use/Land Cover Theme Lead activites:

• When the dataset is re-published with updates, notification is sent to the State Library’s Geographic Information Facebook page and to the GIS community via the State Library’s GeoInfo email account and to MAGIP.

• Land Cover/Land Use does have a work group. It consists of the Theme Lead and members of the U.S. National Forest Service. Meeting occurrence and frequency depends up funding and timely topics or questions. When specific areas of the state, or specific cover types are being mapped, the appropriate agencies are included. For example, the USFWS and BLM were included in mapping of the area around the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge.

• Because the theme is a base layer on our interactive web maps, all web users are aware of it. We also answer approximately three requests per months from users, either requesting specific data for particular areas, or asking for interpretive information on classification units.

Outreach is dependent on funding.  Additional funding would allow expansion of the working group to include other agencies engaged in land use mapping, such as the NRCS, and more outreach to user groups. For example, we are about to revise the introduced riparian vegetation theme element based on classification of 2013 aerial imagery; it would be beneficial to weed districts if they were aware of the theme and availability on the NHP website.