Land Use Primer:
How do we categorize Land Cover?
There are many land use and land cover classification schemes. The American Planning Association lists over 100 at their website (http://www.planning.org/lbcs/OtherStandards/RLUDBClassSysTOCToWebCodingLevels_2.html). Different organizations set up their classifications differently, because they are interested in different aspects of land use and land cover. An organization whose mission involves local economic development will want to distinguish between a school and an office building, but may not care about the difference between cropland and forests. An organization whose mission involves storm water management will have the opposite interests.
Many land use/land cover classifications are based on a system developed by James Anderson and coauthors in 1976 ( http://landcover.usgs.gov/pdf/anderson.pdf). Anderson’s classification combines information on land use and land cover, placing all land into one of 9 level-I categories:
Anderson Level-I Categories
1. Urban or Built Up Land
2. Agricultural Land
3. Rangeland
4. Forest Land
5. Water
6. Wetland
7. Barren Land
8. Tundra
9. Perennial Snow or Ice
Subcategories make finer distinctions. For example, Level-I Category 1 ( Urban Land) could be divided into Level-II subcategories such as:
One Possible Set of Level-II Subcategories
11. Low density residential
12. Medium density residential
13. High density residential
14. Commercial
15. Industrial
16. Institutional
17. Extractive
18. Open urban land, including parks and golf courses
Each of these subcategories also can be divided. For example, Level-II subcategory 14 (Commercial) could be divided to distinguish between office buildings and shopping malls, or to distinguish among commercial buildings associated with different industries (retail, health care, etc.).
The user has to be careful when comparing two different land use maps, because Level-II categories can differ from map to map. Some maps even use different Level-I categories.
To see an example of land cover for the CARA region click, http://www.cara.psu.edu/land/images/caraRegionLandCover.pdf