GRS was selected by National Park Service to perform land-cover mapping of the 20-million acre Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This park is the largest national park within the national park system and is characterized by its rugged terrain, 
magnificent mountains and glaciers, and diverse ecosystems. The park contains five of the nine tallest mountains in North America as well as some of the largest glacial features, including Hubbard Glacier, Malaspina Glacier (larger than the state of Rhode Island), and the massive Bagley Ice Field
GRS is implementing our unique satellite image processing methodology to develop the comprehensive and quantitative land-cover/vegetation map and associated database characteristics. Field work and aerial surveys were accomplished to represent the 10-million acre southern portion of the park during the summer of 2004. The northern portion of the park will be visited and sampled during the summer of 2005. GRS develops very accurate image training data sets to represent the diverse landscape characteristics sampled during field efforts in order to classify the eight mosaicked images that cover the park and develop the quanititative map database. All training data are reviewed and verified to resolve any potential problems before using them during the classification process. GRS checks both pixel fidelity and confusion information to resolve potential classification problems. The reulting map data set is quantitative in nature and can be used with virtually any land-cover classification system. This data set be made available to resource managers, ecologists, biologists, and planners and enable the users to develop and evaluate numerous alternative management scenarios and strategies.
