You are here:
Change of Impervious Surface Area Between 2001 and 2006 in the Conterminous United States
Citation:
Xian, G., C. Homer, J. Dewitz, J. Fry, N. Hossain, AND J. D. WICKHAM. Change of Impervious Surface Area Between 2001 and 2006 in the Conterminous United States. PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING AND REMOTE SENSING. American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Bethesda, MD, 77:758-762, (2012).
Impact/Purpose:
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) published the 2001 National Land Cover Database (NLCD) in 2007 (Homer et al., 2007). NLCD 2001, using Landsat imagery as the primary data source, provides national land cover, percent impervious surface area, and percent tree canopy distributions. The percent impervious surface area (ISA) represents the fraction of impervious area in a 30 m grid and has been recognized as an important data source to quantitatively determine the extent of developed land cover at both regional and national scales. This product with the thematic land cover dataset has been widely used to evaluate urban land cover extent and associated effects on hydrological and ecological systems.
Description:
Land cover and land use change have long been recognized as an important driver of past and present ecosystem change, especially when considering terrestrial biodiversity loss in human-dominated regions (IPCC, 2007). Urban land cover is an important component of regional and global environmental change and has significant implications for a range of ecological, biophysical, social, and climate consequences. Urban growth in the last several decades has converted a substantial amount of nonurban landscape into anthropogenic impervious surface in the United States. Systematic and consistent urban land cover monitoring for the nation is important for terrestrial ecosystem research, natural resource management, and socioeconomic assessments.