What is Land Use and Land Cover?
These terms are similar and describe a way to categorize what we see on the landscape. Land use focuses on the way land is developed with a particular emphasis on the functional role of land in economic activity. For example, is agricultural land being used for cropland or pastureland or both or can a land parcel be classified as a business, a residential home or a private medical office?
Land cover is a broader term that classifies the visible character of the land in generic terms. For example is a parcel forested, cultivated or covered with urban structures.
Land use and land cover are used together in schemes to map land utilization. This process usually involves the interpretation of aerial imagery. Work on techniques to do this effectively by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that some “land use” was very difficult to interpret with some types of aerial data. A recreation area for example, which is a land use, may be difficult to interpret but it constituent parts, the land cover of woods, fields and buildings are much easier to categorize. In developing a classification system that had national application and consistent criteria both “land use” and “land cover” classes needed to be included.
The Michigan Land Cover / Land Use Classification System was first published by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and used the USGS work as its model. The Michigan Land Use / Land Cover Classification 2000 is a revision of the original MDNR version that has been adopted by the IMAGIN (Improving Michigan’s Access to Geographic Information Networks) organization, and is the document used to create the land use maps you will find on this website. It consolidates both of the land categories: use and cover, into one working classification system that uses a multi level organizing system. Level 1 classes are the most general, for example Urban and Built up is a land cover class that includes most of the built environment. For Michigan as a whole there are seven broad Level 1 categories of land use/cover (Level 1:1 – Urban and Built up, Level 1:2 – Agricultural Land, Level 1:3- Grasses and Shrub Lands, Level 1:4 – Forest Land, Level 1:5 – Water, Level 1:6 – Wetlands and Level 1:7 – Barren). Each Level 1 class is broken down into subcategories, for example residential and commercial classes within urban and built-up land are at Level 2 and single family and multiple family residential classes are at Level 3. The complete classification system includes five levels.
Why Classify Land Use / Cover?
The explanation for that is simple. We will not know what we have or what we have lost if there is no inventory. A land use/cover map is an inventory of how communities are utilizing the land. It allows us to measure the amount of land being actively used for all types of use including farmland, commercial and residential use. A series of land use maps can explain how land use is changing over time: what types of land uses/covers are increasing and decreasing. Land use maps are useful for discovering trends and predicting future development. Most importantly, land use maps are important to help make informed decisions on how to best utilize land in a community.
STEP ONE:
Interpret land use/cover from aerial imagery and other spatial data
(i.e. wetland maps, road layers and past land use maps) |
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STEP TWO:
Use Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, create a map layer of various land use/cover classifications. |
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STEP THREE:
Compare the new land use/cover map with data created for Genesee County in the statewide mapping of Michigan in 1978 (Michigan Resource Information System [MIRIS] data). Through these comparisons it is possible to calculate change in land use over time. |
| MUNDY TOWNSHIP LAND USE/COVER CHANGE 1978 |
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| MUNDY TOWNSHIP LAND USE/COVER CHANGE 2003 |
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| LAND USE CHANGE |
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