The USGS UMESC is using state-of-the-art three-dimensional mapping technologies to create vegetation maps and orthophoto mosaics from high-resolution digital aerial photography for the entire 2.75-million-acre Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS); floodplain and aquatic areas of the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois; and the full length of the Illinois River. These data are being developed using 8-inch and 16-inch per pixel color infrared digital aerial photography collected during the late summers of 2010 and 2011 for the USACE Upper Mississippi River Restoration-Environmental Management Program’s (UMRR-EMP) Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) element. The UMRR-EMP LTRMP is a multi-agency Federal and State cooperative program designed to monitor, restore, and enhance the multi-use functionality of the UMRS. As the individual sections of the dataset are finalized, they are distributed publicly as shapefiles and Keyhole Markup Language (KMZ) files through UMESC’s Web site. Numerous resource managers and researchers use these data to monitor resource availability and land cover changes, and for project planning. Similar datasets were also created by UMESC using 1989 and 2000 aerial photography.
http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/data_library/land_cover_use/2010_lcu_umesc.html