the smaller urban footprint of the new maps omits some real
urban areas in the process of removing roads. The removal of
rural roads in the
NLCD
developed layers results in an oppor-
tunity to incorporate contemporary road data compiled using
advanced methods, such as
TIGER
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2017)
or private sector data from
HERE
(formerly
NAVTEQ
) (
HERE
,
2016), into the developed class.
Conclusions
Early in our exploratory effort to review readily available in-
formation on urban lands in the United States, we determined
that rural roads included in the developed class of
NLCD
maps
were problematic due to inconsistencies in road location,
density, and continuity.
NLCD
also treats the road network as
a static input. The process described in this article provides a
way to modify the
NLCD
to map an “urban” class by reducing
errors associated with mapping rural roads as “developed”.
The benefits afforded by removing errors associated with the
mapping of roads and more effectively mapping urban lands
from 1992 to 2011 are far reaching. Our mapping of urban
lands not only leads to more accurate results but also allows
for characterizing actual urban growth rather than assessing
changes for a more generalized developed class that includes
rural roads and other small patches of rural developed land.
Based on our results, the following conclusions can be made.
• The removal of approximately 230,000 km
2
of rural roads
from the
NLCD
developed classes led to substantially less
urban land area relative to the
NLCD
developed land area
for each map date, and this difference in area likely will
impact modeling results and policy decisions for users of
these data.
• The urban maps have higher overall accuracy, much
lower urban commission error rates, and only slightly
higher urban omission error rates relative to the
NLCD
developed class.
• Most pixels removed from the
NLCD
developed class and
labeled as Not Urban were located in the eastern US
within regions characterized by low-density development
and an abundance of rural roads.
Reliable maps of urban change are essential to further
understanding of the causes and consequences of human land
use practices on the landscape. The urban maps produced
by removing rural roads as well as other small areas of rural
development from the
NLCD
developed class refine the char-
acterization of urban development patterns and change rates
and this information will assist scientists, planners, and land
managers to better understand and quantify driving forces
and impacts of urban change.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the
USGS
Land Change Sci-
ence and
USGS
Climate Research and Development programs
and Cooperative Agreement G12AC20221 provided by
USGS
to
SUNY ESF
. We would like to thank Michelle Funk, James Fal-
cone, Janis Taylor, and anonymous journal reviewers for their
suggestions. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for
descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement
by the US Government.
Author Contributions
C.S. and W.A. conceived and designed the experiments; W.A.
and S.S. performed the experiments; C.S. and S.S. analyzed
the data; C.S., W.A., and S.S. wrote the paper.
Supplementary Material
Full-resolution (30-meter) digital maps are provided on
USGS
Sciencebase. Data can be accessed using this DOI tag: https://
doi.org/10.5066/F79G5K05.
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