A NASA funded project for the Commonwealth
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA) Earth Science Enterprise Office awarded the Governor's Office for Technology (GOT) in Frankfort a cooperative agreement July 1, 2003.
The Kentucky Landscape Census (KLC) will make NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) satellite and digital airborne imagery and landcover and landuse computer maps available to citizens and governments of the Commonwealth in ground-breaking and unprecedented ways through the Internet. Through the Kentucky Virtual University (KVU), the project will also provide education and training to bring the current workforce up-to-speed on the benefit and use of satellite imagery (remote sensing) to do their work Another component of the project will 'hook together' computer mapping systems across KY, the U.S. and Internationally - that cannot currently inter-operate with each other.
The project extends some current work also funded by NASA at GOT, the Kentucky Landscape Snapshot (KLS) at http://kls.ky.gov a $1.3 million project. While the KLS project is a 'snapshot' in time of the landcover of the state, the KLC will create a 'change detection map'. This will show how the landscape is changing, for example what farmland has become urban or what forests have become grasslands. Understanding how our landscape is changing is important to citizens, elected officials, and governments so that they can make good land management decisions.
Gary R. Harp, DGO, is the Principal Investigator for the project. There are three other partners who were jointly awarded the cooperative agreement: