Product Name:  LCLUSTAT

Description: Vermont/Lake Champlain Basin Land Cover Summary Tables. This directory contains data tables in .DBF (DBase) format summarizing the land cover data by town and by watershed. LCLUTOWN.DBF - Land Cover acreages by town in Vermont. Created by overlaying the LCLU data with the TBHASH data layer in GRID format. To avoid misleading statistics in towns bordering Lake Champlain (where TBHASH boundaries extend out into the lake) the portions of the towns containing Lake Champlain were not considered. The table contains area in acres for each land cover class within each town, plus the town name, FIPS code (including county code, to allow aggregation by county), and total acreage for the town. LCLUWSHD - Land Cover acreages by 14-digit hydrologic unit in Vermont. Created by overlaying the LCLU data with the WATSHED coverage in GRID format. The table contains for each watershed, the 14-digit hydrologic unit code, the descriptive name of the watershed (85 characters), and total acreage. Notes: The data in these tables were derived from the LCLU land cover database and the respective overlay coverage (watersheds, towns, etc.). Therefore, they have the same accuracies and limitations as their source data. In particular, the Land Cover database was created by classification of Landsat satellite imagery, enhanced by GIS data supplied by local cooperating organizations (such as VCGI and regional planning commissions). Enhancement is needed because the satellite, from several hundred miles up in space, cannot tell the difference between a forest and a forested wetland, because all it sees in either case are treetops with leaves. A residential neighborhood with many trees may also look like a forest from above. Due to the many different sources of data used for GIS enhancement, the accuracy and detail of GIS-enhanced features such as urban land uses and wetlands varies across the area mapped. The overall accuracy of the land cover data layer was estimated to be 85.9%, based on a random sampling of over 1400 sites. The important thing to remember in looking at these tables is that the land/cover was derived in a semi-automated method, over a large land area, so anomalies may appear in local areas where GIS update data was unavailable or out of date. See the Final Report for the LCLU data for more information on how the data was derived.
Product Size: 150 kbytes
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