The 1995/97 Land use/Land cover polygon shapefiles for New Jersey’s Watershed Management Areas have been created by comparing the 1986 LU/LC layers from the NJDEP GIS database to the 1995/97 color infrared digital imagery, and delineating areas of change. In addition, an impervious surface (IS) code has been assigned to each polygon. All polygons retain the original 1986 land use code, as well as being given a 1995/97 land use code so that change analysis can be done directly from these data sets.

NOTE ON THE 1995/97 LANDUSE UPDATE DATASETS:

The data sets available for download as of 02/02/01, are the FINAL versions. These replace the PRELIMINARY data sets that were available prior to this date. The structure and coding of these FINAL data sets are the same as for the PRELIMINARY layers. However, delineations of some polygons, and some attribute values, may have changed in these FINAL data sets. Generally, these changes occur near WMA boundaries as improvements to edgematches were made after all WMA data sets were completed. In addition, the FINAL layers reflect the new WMA boundaries that were adopted by the NJDEP 05/01/2000. While some WMA boundaries have not undergone any modifications, several have undergone substantial modifications. The new boundaries can be viewed in the index map.