The Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF) provides earth science data and products to help everyone to better understand global environmental systems. In particular, the GLCF develops and distributes remotely sensed satellite data and products that explain land cover from the local to global scales.

Primary data and products available at the GLCF are free to anyone via FTP. Online datasets may be accessed electronically through the Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI).

The majority of users accessing GLCF datasets (certainly not all) come from the following communities:

• Science: geography, Earth science, ecology, climatology, conservation, education
• Environmental Policy: global warming, sustainable development, risk management
• Resource Management: biodiversity assessment, forestry, protected area management, forest inventory
• Disaster Management: fire, flood and drought monitoring, disaster mitigation, food security
• Computer Science: data mining, data fusion, computer vision

Other features/links of interest here include:

http://www.landcover.org/index.shtml