Land Cover Category Descriptions

	Class	Description
	Developed	High-density built-up areas typically associated with commercial, industrial and residential activities and transportation routes. These areas can be expected to contain a significant amount of impervious surfaces, roofs, roads, and other concrete and asphalt surfaces.
	Turf & Grass	A compound category of undifferentiated maintained grasses associated mostly with developed areas. This class contains cultivated lawns typical of residential neighborhoods, parks, cemeteries, golf courses, turf farms, and other maintained grassy areas. Also includes some agricultural fields due to similar spectral reflectance properties.
	Other Grasses & Agriculture	Includes non-maintained grassy areas commonly found along transportation routes and other developed areas and also agricultural fields used for both crop production and pasture.
	Deciduous Forest	Includes southern New England mixed hardwood forests. Also includes scrub areas characterized by patches of dense woody vegetation. May include isolated low density residential areas.
	Coniferous Forest	Includes southern New England mixed softwood forests. May include isolated low density residential areas.
	Water	Open water bodies and watercourses with relatively deep water.
	Non-forested Wetland	Includes areas that predominately are wet throughout most of the year and that have a detectable vegetative cover (therefore not open water). Also includes some small water courses due to spectral characteristics of mixed pixels that include both water and vegetation.
	Forested Wetland	Includes areas depicted as wetland, but with forested cover. Also includes some small water courses due to spectral characteristics of mixed pixels that include both water and vegetation.
	Tidal Wetland	Emergent wetlands, wet throughout most of the year, with distinctive marsh vegetation and located in areas influenced by tidal change.
	Barren	Mostly non-agricultural areas free from vegetation, such as sand, sand and gravel operations, bare exposed rock, mines, and quarries. Also includes some urban areas where the composition of construction materials spectrally resembles more natural materials. Also includes some bare soil agricultural fields.
	Utility Rights-of-way	Includes utility rights-of-way. This category was manually digitized on-screen from rights-of-way visible in the Landsat satellite imagery. The class was digitized within the deciduous and coniferous categories only.

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Change Map Category Descriptions

	Class	Description
No Change Classes
	Developed before 1985	Areas (pixels) developed before the 1985 satellite image was captured.
	Turf & Grass	Areas (pixels) that were turf and grass before the 1985 satellite image was captured.
	Water	Any pixel that was water in at least one of the four land cover maps.
	Undeveloped	Pixels still undeveloped* on the 2002 Land Cover Map.
Change Classes		Change from Undeveloped to . . .
	Developed 1985-1990	Areas (pixels) undeveloped* in 1985 and developed in 1990.
	Turf & Grass 1985-1990	Areas (pixels) undeveloped* in 1985 and turf and grass in 1990.
	Developed 1990-1995	Areas (pixels) undeveloped* in 1990 and developed in 1995.
	Turf & Grass 1990-1995	Areas (pixels) undeveloped* in 1990 and turf and grass in 1995.
	Developed 1995-2002	Areas (pixels) undeveloped* in 1995 and developed in 2002.
	Turf & Grass 1995-2002	Areas (pixels) undeveloped* in 1995 and turf and grass in 2002.

*Here, undeveloped includes deciduous forest, coniferous forest, non-forested wetlands, forested wetlands, tidal wetlands, barren, and utility rights-of-way.

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