Land Cover and Change Classification

The Value of Landscape Change Mapping

Land cover information provides important inputs to local, regional and state land use planning. The importance of accurate and timely information describing the kind and extent of land resources is increasing. This is especially true in metropolitan areas such as the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota which encompasses seven counties and more than 100 civil government units.

In collaboration with the Metropolitan Council, the regional planning agency for the TCMA, researchers at the University of Minnesota have prepared land cover maps of the region. These maps have proven very useful to the Council. Marcel Jouseau, manager of water resource assessment with the Council says, “The 1998 and 2000 Land Classification projects have been and continue to be extremely useful to us. In the last two years, the Metropolitan Council has put great efforts into the preparation of a new Blueprint to guide future development of the metropolitan area. The Land Classification maps that you produced for us have helped us with two projects basic to the Blueprint: a Natural Resources Inventory and Assessment (NRI) and a finer grain definition of land available for future development.”