The North America Land Change Monitoring System (NALCMS) is a collaborative initiative between Canada, Mexico and the United States to monitor the observed physical cover on the surface of the Earth and its change over time. NALCMS is a trilateral effort between Natural Resources Canada, the United States Geological Survey, and three Mexican organizations including the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía), National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of the Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional Para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad), and the National Forestry Commission of Mexico (Comisión Nacional Forestal). The collaboration is facilitated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an international organization created by the Canada, Mexico, and United States governments under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation to promote environmental collaboration between the three countries.

The series of Story Maps contained in this collection offers a wide view of the work of the NALCMS project. Since the general context and meaning of Land Cover and the distribution of its different classes across North America, to offer interactive applications to show how the land cover is in constant change and show stories of the drivers of some land changes in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

The first Story Map of this collection “Our Changing Continent”, highlights the newest North American land cover change map provides a complete picture of the dynamics of the Earth’s surface in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, based on natural phenomena such as wildfires, fluctuations in the levels of inland water bodies, as well as changes driven by human activities. This Story map offers a series of interactive maps that show the North America Land Cover maps of 2010 and 2015 produced by NALCMS, as well as the polygons that delineate the changes between the two maps. Specific statistics of land change by land cover class and general land cover gains and losses are also included in this Story Map.

The second Story Map of this collection “North American Land Cover Change, 2010-2015”, shows interactive change polygons larger than 1 hectare across Canada, Mexico and the United States. The legend and color code on the map depict the 19 land cover classes of NALCMS classification scheme level 2, while interactive pop-ups in each polygon describe more generalized land cover types in 12 classes, corresponding to level 1 of the NALCMS classification. This map shows ten stories of changes in Canada, Mexico and the United States that included the impact of wildlife fires, urban sprawl, aquaculture, landslides, oils exploitation, forest recovery and cropland expansion.

The third Story map of this collection “North American Land Change Monitoring System”, shows the general context of Land Cover Mapping conducted by the NALCMS group, clarify the common misconceptions between land cover and land use, and highlights the North America Land Cover map of 2015 at 3. meters resolution derived form a combination of Landsat imagery and RapidEye satellite sensor. General statistics of Land Cover spatial distribution by type are also presented in this Story Map.

To learn more about the North American Land Change Monitoring System and to download the data, free of charge, visit: www.cec.org/north-american-land-change-monitoring-system/

For any question, please contact naatlas@cec.org