| Code | Description |
| Urban or Built-up Land | Comprised of areas of intensive use with much of the
land covered by structures. Included in this category
are cities, towns, villages, strip developments along
highways, transportation, power, and communications
facilities, and areas such as those occupied by mills,
shopping centers, industrial and commericial complexes,
and institutions that may be isolated from Urban areas. |
| Residential | Uses range from high density, represented by the
multiple-unit structures of urban cores, to low density,
where houses are on lots of more than an acre, on the
periphery of urban expansion. |
| Commercial and Services | Commercial areas are those used predominantly for the
sale of products and services. |
| Industrial | Include a wide array of land uses from light
manufacturing to heavy manufacturing plants. |
| Transportation, Communication, & Utilities | This land use occurs to some degree within all of the
other Urban or Built-up catagories and actually can be
found within many other categories. |
| Industrial and Commercial Complexes | Includes those industrial and commercial land uses that
typically occur together or in close functional
proximity. Such areas commonly are labeled with
terminology such as "Industrial Park". |
| Mixed Urban or Built-up Land | Used for a mixture of Level II Urban or Built-up uses
where individual uses cannot be separated at mapping
scale. Where more than one-third intermixture of another
use or uses occurs in a specific area, it is classified
as Mixed Urban or Built-up land. |
| Other Urban or Built-up Land | Typically consists of uses such as golf driving ranges,
zoos, urban parks, cemetaries, waste dumps,
water-control structures and spillways, the extensive
part of such uses as golf courses and ski areas, and
undeveloped land within an urban setting. Open land may
be in very intensive use but a use that does not require
structures such as playgrounds, botanical gardens, or
arboreta. |
| Agricultural Land | Land used primarily for production of food and fiber. |
| Cropland and Pasture | Cropland harvested, including bush fruits; cultivated
summer-fallow and idle cropland; land on which crop
failure occurs; cropland in soil-improvement grasses and
legumes; cropland used only for pasture in rotation with
crops; and pasture on land more or less permanently used
for that purpose. |
| Orchards, Grove, Vineyard, Nurseries, etc. | Orchards, groves, and vineyards produce the various
fruits and nut crops. Nurseries and horticultural areas,
which include floricultural and seed-and-sod areas and
some greenhouses, are used perennially for those
purposes. Tree nurseries which provide seedlings for
plantation forestry are also included here. |
| Confined Feeding Operations | Are large, specialized livestock production enterprises,
chiefly beef cattle feedlots, dairy operations with
confined feeding, large poultry farms, and hog feedlots.
These operations have large animal populations
restricted to relatively small areas. The result is a
concentration of waste material that is an environmental
concern. The waste-disposal problems justify a separate
category for these relatively small areas. Excluded are
shipping corrals and other temporary holding facilities. |
| Other Agricultural Land | Include farmsteads, holding areas for livestock such as
corrals, breeding and training facilities on horse
farms, farm lanes and roads, ditches and canals, small
farm ponds, and similar uses. |
| Rangeland | Rangeland historically has been defined as land where
the potential natural vegetation is predominantly
grasses, grasslike plants, forbs, or shrubs and where
natural herbivory was an important influence in its
precivilization state. |
| Herbaceous Rangeland | Encompasses lands dominated by naturally occurring
grasses and forbs as well as those areas of actual
rangeland which have been modified to include grasses
and forbs as their principal cover, when the land is
managed for rangeland purposes and not managed using
practices typical of pastureland. It includes the tall
grass (or true prairie), short grass, bunch grass or
palouse grass, and desert grass regions. |
| Shrub and Brush Rangeland | The typical shrub occurrences are found in those arid
and semiarid regions characterized by such xerophytic
vegetative types with woody stems as big sagebrush,
shadscale greasewood, or creosotebush and also by the
typical desert succulent xerophytes, such as the various
forms of Cactus. Where highly alkaline soils are
present, halophytes such as desert saltbush (Atriplex)
may occur. Also included in this category are chaparrel,
mountain mahogany and scrub oaks (Quercus). The eastern
brushland are typically former croplands or pastureland
which now have grown up in brush so that they are not
identifiable as cropland or pasture from remote sensor
imagery. |
| Mixed Rangeland | When more than one-third intermixture of either
herbaceous or shrub and brush rangeland species occurs
in a specific area, it is classified as Mixed Rangeland.
Mixtures of herbaceous and shrub or brush tundra plants
are not considered Rangeland. |
| Forest Land | Forest Lands have a tree-crown areal density (crown
closure percentage) of 10 percent or more, are stocked
with trees capable of producing timber or other wood
products, and exert an infleunce on the climate or water
regime. |
| Deciduous Forest Land | All forested areas having a predominance of trees that
lose their leaves at the end of the frost-free season or
at the beginning of a dry season. Deciduous forest types
characteristic of Wetland, such as tupelo (Nyssa) or
cottonwood (Populus deltoides) are not included in this
category. |
| Evergreen Forest Land | All forested areas in which the trees are predominantly
those which remain green throughout the year. Both
coniferous and broad-leaved evergreens are included in
this category. Evergreen species commonly associated
with Wetland, such as tamarack (Larix laricina) or black
spruce are not included in this category. |
| Mixed Forest Land | When more than one-third intermixture of either
evergreen or deciduous species occurs in a specific
area, it is classified as Mixed Forest Land. |
| Water | The delineation of water areas depends on the scale of
data presentation and the scale and resolution
characteristics of the remote sensor data used for
interpretation of land use and land cover. For many
purposes, agencies need information on the size and
number of small wter bodies. These can be obtained from
small-scale remote sensor data with considerable
accuracy. |
| Streams and Canals | Includes rivers, creeks, canals, and other linear water
bodies. Where the water course is interrupted by a
control structure, the impounded area will be placed in
the Reservoirs category. The boundary between streams
and other bodies of water is the straight line across
the mouth of the stream up to 1 nautical mile. Beyond
that limit, the classification of the water bodies
changes to the appropriate category. (ie. Bay, Lake,
etc.) |
| Lakes | Lakes are nonflowing, naturally enclosed bodies of
water, including regulated natural lakes but excluding
reservoirs. Islands that are too small to delineate
should be included in the water area. |
| Reservoirs | Reservoirs are artificial impoundments of water used for
irrigation, flood control, municipal water supplies,
recreation, hydroelectric power generation and so forth. |
| Wetland | Wetlands are those areas where the water table is at,
near, or above the land surface for a significant part
of most years. The hydrologic regime is such that
aquatic or hydrophytic vegetation usually is
established, although alluvial and tidal flats may be
nonvegetated. (ie. marshes, mudflats, swamps, wet
meadows, playas, etc.) |
| Forested Wetland | Forested Wetlands are wetlands dominated by woody
vegetation. These include seasonally flooded bottomland
hardwood, mangrove swamps, shrub swamps, and wooded
swamps including those around bogs. |
| Nonforested Wetland | Nonforested Wetlands are dominated by wetland herbaceous
vegetation or are nonvegetated. These wetlands include
tidal and nontidal fresh, brackish, and salt marshes and
nonvegetated flats and also freshwater meadows, wet
prairies, and open bogs. |
| Barren Land | Barren Land is land of limited ability to support life
and in which less than one-third of the area has
vegetation or other cover. In general, it is an area of
thin soil, sand, or rocks. Land may appear barren
because of man's activities. When neither the former nor
the future use can be discerned and the area is
obviously in a state of land use transition, it is
considered to be Barren land, in order to avoid
inferential errors. |
| Dry Salt Flats | Dry Salt Flats occurring on the flat-floored bottoms of
interior desert basins which do not qualify as Wetland
are included in this category. |
| Beaches | Beaches are the smooth sloping accumulations of sand and
gravel along shorelines. The surface is stable inland,
but the shoreward part is subject to erosion by wind and
water and to deposition in protected areas. |
| Sandy Areas other than Beaches | Sandy Areas other than Beaches are composed primarily of
dunes - accumulations of sand transported by the wind.
Sand accumulations most commonly are found in deserts
although they also occur on coastal plains, river flood
plains, and deltas and in periglacial environments. |
| Bare Exposed Rock | Includes areas of bedrock exposure, desert pavement,
scarps, talus, slides, volcanic material, rock glaciers,
and other accumulations of rock without vegetative
cover, with the exception of such rock exposures
occurring in tundra regions. |
| Strip Mines, Quarries, and Gravel Pits | Those extractive mining activities that have significant
surface expression are included in this category.
Vegetative cover and overburden are removed to expose
such deposits as coal, iron ore, limestone, copper, sand
or gravel, etc. |
| Transitional Areas | This category is intended for those areas which are in
transition from one land use activity to another. All
that actually can be determined in these situations is
that a transition is in progress, and inference about
past or future use should be avoided. |
| Mixed Barren Land | Used when a mixture of Barren Land features occurs and
the dominant land use occupies less than two-thirds of
the area. |
| Tundra Land: All Classes | Tundra is the term applied to the treeless regions
beyond the limit of the boreal forest and above the
altitudinal limit of trees in high mountain ranges. |
| Tundra Land: Shrub Brush | Consists of the various woody shrubs and brushy thickets
found in the tundra environment. These occur in
dense-to-open evergreen and deciduous thickets. |
| Tundra Land: Herbaceous | Herbaceous Tundra is composed of various sedges,
grasses, forbs, lichens, and mosses, all of which lack
woody stems. |
| Tundra Land: Bare Ground | This category is intended for those tundra occurrences
which are less than one-third vegetated. It usually
consists of sites visually dominated by considerable
areas of exposed bare rock, sand, or gravel interspersed
with low herbaceous and shrubby plants. |
| Tundra Land: Wet | Wet Tundra is usually found in areas having little
topographic relief. Standing water is almost always
present during months when temperatures average above
the freezing level. Numerous shallow lakes are also
common. Permafrost is usually close to the surface, and
various patterned ground features may be evident. |
| Tundra Land: Mixed | Where more than one-third intermixture of another use or
uses occurs in a specific area, it is classified as
Mixed Tundra. |
| Snow or Ice: All Classes | Certain lands have a perennial cover of either snow or
ice because of a combination of environmental factor
which cause these features to survive the summer melting
season. In doing so, they persists as relatively
permanent features on the landscape and may be used as
environmental surrogates. |
| Snow or Ice: Perrenial Snowfields | Perennial Snowfields are accumulations of snow and firn
that did not entirely melt during previous summers.
Snowfields can be quite extensive and thus
representative of a regional climate, or can be quite
isolated and localized, when they are known by various
terms, such as snowbanks. |
