Contact: Jay Tebeau FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(202) 482-6090 3/10/95
In a move that will save an estimated $30 million, four government agencies announced today the formation of a partnership to jointly acquire and share satellite data. The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Biological Service have also agreed to create a land characteristics data base for the contiguous United States.
By the joint acquisition and sharing of data, the government will save $4 million in direct costs. Another $26 million will be saved in indirect costs for analyses, archiving, management and distribution. The cooperative arrangement is in response to Vice President Gore's goals for reinventing government under the National Performance Review.
The agreement sets up a Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) to purchase Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery. TM imagery is used in a variety of complementary programmatic applications by these agencies. Cooperative efforts will build on the strengths of individual programs, resulting in better service. The objectives of MRLC are to promote agency cooperation, to coordinate landcover mapping activities of the programs to the greatest extent possible, to avoid duplication of effort, and to ensure information from each program is used to the maximum extent possible.
NOAA's participation in negotiating the agreement was led by the Coastal Ocean Program's Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP). C-CAP has provided leadership to develop a standard nationally-accepted protocol for consistent and reliable landcover change information for coastal wetlands and uplands, and has supported regional projects applying this methodology. The program uses Landsat TM imagery and aerial photography to monitor changes in the extent and location of these critical habitats. C-CAP will be providing a variety of technical expertise and analyses to the MRLC.
According to Donald Scavia, director of the Coastal Ocean Program, "The cooperation of these federal agencies is an important step toward providing landcover change information necessary for understanding and analyzing habitat and wetlands loss, global change impacts, ecosystem dynamics, and the success of nonpoint-source pollution management efforts. The willingness of federal agencies to pool their resources and expertise is a step in the right direction in making government less costly and more effective."
One of the first joint projects to come out of the MRLC is a cooperative effort between the National Biological Service and C-CAP to map landcover change in South Florida. While the two agencies will share processing and ground-truthing of the data, C-CAP will provide the change analyses comparing 1988 and 1993 Landsat TM imagery.