The U.S. EPA is developing a new monitoring program, the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), to monitor and assess the ecological health of major ecosystems, including surface waters, forests, near coastal, wetlands, agricultural, and arid lands, in an integrated systematic manner. EMAP is designed to operate at regional and national scales for decades and evaluate the extent and condition of entire ecological resources. EMAP has a common sampling framework for all resource types which consist of a systematic grid of about 12,500 points in the conterminous US which can be subdivided into sub-grids of varying densities. Landscape characterization via remote imagery will be done on 40 sq km hexagons centered on these points. The 6% sample of the land surface will allow valid extrapolations to describe and quantify the extent of ecological resources.