Trouble displaying MRLC land cover layer

al6 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:23:56 GMT

I have tried to download and display data in ArcGIS from https://www.mrlc.gov/viewer/ several times, and every time it shows me grasslands in the Great Lakes. I have no idea what I am doing wrong. Here is what I have done each time:

Draw a polygon around the state of Wisconsin in https://www.mrlc.gov/viewer/ and download the data. (I have also tried downloading the whole country, and downloading different ranges of years.)
Move the zip file to my project file folder.
Unzip/extract all files into my project file folder.
Open the folder in the Catalog pane in ArcGIS.
Drag the 2024 raster dataset onto the map.
It displays grasslands in the Great Lakes.

Please let me know if I am doing something wrong, if there is any other method I can try, or if there is another source for land cover data that covers different ranks of developed land.

I have tried to upload an image but the forum says I do not have permission.

Re: Trouble displaying MRLC land cover layer

al6 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:58:29 GMT

Solved it. The readme text file instructions were outdated, but I explored some more and figured out I needed to open Symbology --> click the hamburger menu in the upper right --> select Import from layer file --> and import the provided symbology layer. It seems so obvious now lol.

topic Trouble displaying MRLC land cover layer in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Trouble displaying MRLC land cover layer

Re: Trouble displaying MRLC land cover layer