The USGS currently houses the institute at the Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The LCI will address land cover topics from local to global scales, and in both domestic and international settings. The USGS through the Land Cover Institute serves as a facilitator for land cover and land use science, applications, and production functions. The institute assists in the availability and technical support of land cover data sets through increasing public and scientific awareness of the importance of land cover science. LCI continues, after the reorganization of the World Data Centers in 2009, serving as the World Data Center (WDC) for land cover data for access to, or information about, land cover data of the world