About
Connecticut's Landscape Project
How
the Maps Were Produced | FGDC
Metadata | FAQ | Caution! | Map Category Descriptions
How
the Maps Were Produced |
Land cover,
as its name implies, shows the "covering" of the landscape.
This is to be distinguished from land use, which is what is permitted,
practiced or intended for a given area. For example, a "forested"
land cover area as detected by the satellite may appear as "rural
residential" on your town's zoning map. CLEAR's land cover information
comes from remotely sensed data from satellites, in this case several
of the Landsat satellite series. Sensors aboard the satellite collect
(sense) radiation in a number of different wavelengths that is reflected
from the surface of the earth. The data are converted via computer programs
and human expertise into land cover maps made up of many pieces, or
pixels, of information that are 30 meters (or about 100 feet) square. Although
remotely sensed land cover maps have been around for quite some time,
comparing different land cover datasets has been difficult. Satellite
sensors are continually evolving along with the land cover information
derived from them. Land cover derived from images from different years
taken by different sensors (and perhaps at different times of the year)
normally cannot be compared directly with any claim of accuracy. CLEAR's
challenge was to solve this "apples and oranges" problem by
using a technique called "cross-correlation analysis."
This allows us to provide state citizens and decision
makers with reliable, comparable information which shows how Connecticut's
landscape has changed over the last 21 years. Maps from five dates (1985,
1990, 1995, 2002 and 2006) were created, and can be explored in various ways
from the Statewide Data page of
this site. The information is available at a more detailed
level for each of the 169 individual municipalities
in Connecticut, as well as for watersheds.
The
FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) has a standard form
for reporting metadata, or information about data. Visit the
FGDC-compliant metadata for:
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