Lab 3: Land Use

Jake McClaskey & Rachel Schafer

ENVL 4300

Dr. Tait Chirenje

Stockton University
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Abstract:

Throughout the course of history, human beings have worked to utilize Earth’s natural

resources for survival and the advancement of society. The objective of this exercise was to use

arc GIS to create visual representations of how land use in Atlantic County has changed from

1986 to 2012, and indicate any significant findings. The first part of this lab involved viewing

digital orthoquad images (DOQQs) from 1985 to 2012 for a developed region of Galloway

Township, New Jersey and indicating where urbanization of previously forested areas had

occurred. The second part of this lab involved analyzing land use data for Atlantic County from

the years of 1986, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2012, and then creating maps in arc GIS displaying the

land uses in the county for each year. It was determined that the most interesting trend within the

data involved the rapid expansion of urban land at the expense of forest, barren, and agricultural

land that occurred in Atlantic County from 1995 to 2007. Approximately 10,566 acres of forest

land, 1,059 acres of Barren Land, and 1,641 acres of agricultural land were lost from 1995 to

2007, while approximately 12,397 of urban land was created in the same period of time. A

majority of the urban expansion from 1995 to 2007 was witnessed to have occurred in a

southeastern part of Atlantic County, approximately where the Garden State Parkway runs

through.
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Table of Contents:

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….Page 3

Objectives…………………………………………………………………………………....Page 4

Methodology………………………………………………………………………………...Page 5

Results and Discussion………………………………………………………………………Page 6

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….Page 15

References………………………………………………………………………………….Page 17

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………...Page 18
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Introduction:

The Earth’s surface is shaped by a variety of factors, both natural and man-made.

Throughout the course of history, humans have used and altered the land via resource extraction,

changing the flow of rivers, agricultural expansion, and population growth (which in turn leads

to urban and industrial expansion). The materials in an area, such as vegetation and pre-existing

structures, determine how the area will be used (Environmental Literacy Council, 2015).

According to the Environmental Literacy Council, “Land use describes the various ways in

which human beings make use of and manage the land and its resources” (2015). In New Jersey,

the Anderson Classification System is used to define six general land use areas and codes. The

land use codes for these six areas are as follows: urban land = 1000s, agriculture = 2000s, forest

= 4000s, water = 5000s, wetlands = 6000s, and barren land = 7000s. These codes can be further

subdivided into more specific categories, such as 4200, which is coniferous forests, or 5200,

which is natural lakes. Many of the subdivisions can also be broken down into even more

specific categories, for example, 4220, which is a coniferous forest that has 50% or more crown

cover (NJDEP, 2012).

Land use is a very important factor to take into consideration for every discipline of

environmental science. This is due to the fact that natural resources such as water, soil, and biota

are greatly impacted by land use and management practices (Ameztegui et al., 2016). The

conservation and preservation of these resources is why it is important to monitor land use

changes. Land use of any kind can have several impacts including deforestation, soil erosion,

and water quality issues. One of the biggest land use issues is that population growth is

damaging valuable ecosystems. As urban areas overtake wetlands and forests, issues on small

and large scales are created. Smaller scale issues involve the displacement of organisms, the
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erosion of local soils, and loss of resources. Broad scale problems include potential greenhouse

gas emissions (since these areas sequester carbon), salinization, and deforestation (Kniivila,

2004). As land use continues to change, the problems associated have the potential to

significantly amplify.

New Jersey currently faces these issues as it struggles to balance the need to expand

urban areas while preserving the Pinelands and its resources. In order to remedy these problems,

the Pinelands Commission created the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) in

order to expand upon and improve the Pinelands Protection Act of 1979. The CMP breaks the

Pinelands up into preservation and protection areas. Development in protection areas is severely

restricted. The plan also implements standards in order to manage the various areas and

resources of the Pinelands (Pinelands Commission, 2015). For the purposes of this lab, land use

data from Atlantic County, New Jersey from 1985-2012 will be examined in order to confirm the

trend that urban area is taking away from forested area, as well as possibly identifying other land

use trends.

Objectives:

The goal of this lab was to gain experience finding, downloading, and interpreting land

use data and ortho-photographs by creating maps on Arc GIS. Each land use type will be

compared from 1985-2012 in Atlantic County order to identify any trends or changes. After

analysis, possible reasons for change and the consequences of those changes will be discussed.

This lab will help students gain an understand of how land use changes, and why it is important

to monitor those changes on local and large scales.

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Methodology:

The first part of this lab involved discussing land use changes in Galloway Township,

New Jersey by viewing digital orthoquad images (DOQQs) from 1985-2012. The DOQQS were

obtained from the NJGIN (2019) website. Once on the website, an address was entered, and the

four closest quads around the address were selected “by polygon” and downloaded as Mr Siid

files. This was done for each available year within the time frame. Once the files were

downloaded and unzipped, they were displayed on ArcMap. Once all four images were uploaded

to ArcMap, they automatically display as a whole image. These images were simply used for

visual assessment.

The second part of this lab involved the analysis of land use changes in Atlantic County

between 1985-2012. Land use data maps were downloaded from the NJDEP (2019) website for

the following years: 1986, 1995/97, 2002, 2007, and 2012. The files were downloaded,

unzipped, and uploaded as shapefiles to ArcMap. The land use data from 1986 was organized by

county, so the Atlantic County data was easily displayed in ArcMap in one step. However, from

1995-2012, the data was organized by Water Management Areas (WMAs). Atlantic County

consists of three WMAs: 14, 15, and 17. All three WMAs had to be uploaded to ArcMap. Once

all three WMAs were on the map, they were merged, and then clipped to the Atlantic County

boundary. This process was done for every year between 1995-2012. After the merging and

clipping process was complete, the same process was able to be carried out for each year. The

next step was to create shapefiles for each individual land use type for each year. This was done

by “selecting by attribute” for each land use type within the attribute table. The selected data

was then exported as a shapefile. Once shapefiles were made for each of the six land use types

for each year, the total number of acres of each type was recorded in a table for analysis. The
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total number of acres was found by selecting statistics after right clicking acres in the attribute

table, and recording the sum. Each shapefile was displayed in various maps for visual analysis

as well.

Results and Discussion:

The most noticeable land use change from the first part of this laboratory, which involved

observing aerial photos of Galloway, New Jersey and identifying changes in land use, occurred

in an already-developed area of land at the intersection of Pitney Road and Jimmie Leeds Road

between the years 2002 and 2007. Figure 1 shows the area of land in 2002:

Figure 1: Snip of a digital orthoquad from 2002 at the intersection of Pitney Road and Jimmie

Leeds Road in Galloway, New Jersey. Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network

(2019)

In Figure 1, there is a largely undeveloped area of land on the right hand side of the

picture, just to the bottom left of the four-way intersection. There is one building sitting directly
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at the intersection, but all land below it in the figure appears to be undeveloped forest land. Also,

directly across the street from the forested land is a Wawa that sits at the four-way intersection,

just to the bottom right of the intersection itself in the figure. These two areas of land change

from largely undeveloped forest land in 2002 to developed land in 2007, evidenced by a snip of

the same digital orthoquad from the year 2007, seen in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Snip of a digital orthoquad from 2007 at the intersection of Pitney Road and Jimmie

Leeds Road in Galloway, New Jersey. Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network

(2019)

Figure 2 shows the development of the previously forested land at the two locations

already described. A shopping center and a large parking lot were constructed on the land located

just below and to the left of the four-way intersection. Also, the Wawa that appears as just a

small convenience store in Figure 1 was converted to a Super Wawa featuring a newly
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constructed gas station, seen in Figure 2 just below the Wawa building itself. Aerial photos of the

entire region analyzed from the years 1995, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2015 are found in the

appendix at the end of this report.

This trend of developing previously forested land into urban land in Atlantic County

continued to prove evident in the second part of the exercise, which involved identifying land use

trends in Atlantic County from 1986 to 2012. The total areas of land (in acres) devoted to each

land use type in Atlantic County for the years of 1986, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2012 are found in

Table 1:

Table 1: Area of Land Devoted to Each Land Use Type for the Years 1986, 1995, 2002,

2007, and 2012

After examining Table 1, it was determined that the most interesting trend within the data

involved the rapid expansion of urban land at the expense of forest, barren, and agricultural land

that occurred in Atlantic County from 1995 to 2007. As urbanization continued to make its way

into Atlantic County during the mid-1990’s and into the 2000’s, land that was previously utilized

as forest, Barren Land, or agricultural land had to be altered in order to satisfy the development

demands that naturally come along with urbanization. While this was rather minutely evident in

the years from 1986 to 1995 and also in the years from 2007 through 2012, it was quite
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pronounced in the years from 1995 to 2007. During this time, large amounts of land in Atlantic

County previously used as forest, Barren, or agricultural land had been developed into urban

land. Table 2 shows the net changes in the area of land (in acres) for urban, forest, barren, and

agricultural land use types for two brackets of years (1995 to 2002 and 2002 to 2007), along with

throughout the overall time frame of 1995 to 2007.

Table 2: Changes in Area of Land Devoted to Urban, Forest, Barren, and Agricultural Land Use

Types from 1995 to 2002, and from 2002 to 2007

Table 2 shows that there was an obvious cost to the further urbanization of Atlantic

County in the years from 1995 to 2007: large amounts of forest land had to be sacrificed, along

with smaller, but substantial, amounts sacrificed from barren and agricultural land. While the

data contained in Table 2 may suggest that forest land in Atlantic County is most at risk of being

completely altered into urbanized land, Barren Land may actually prove to take the crown. Table

3 displays the percent changes in each land use type in Atlantic County from the year 1995 to the

year 2007:
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Table 3: Percent Changes in Area of Land Devoted to Urban, Forest, Barren Land, and

Agricultural Land Use Types from the Years between 1995 and 2007

Over one-third of the land that was utilized as Barren Land in Atlantic County during the

year 1995 was no longer Barren Land come the year 2007. Barren land is defined by the United

States National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) as “those ecosystems in which

less than one-third of the area has vegetation or other cover”(NASA, 1996). Land areas in New

Jersey that may mainly be classified as Barren Lands include protected beaches and sandy areas

other than protected beaches. Altering these Barren Lands and urbanizing them may be

detrimental to any species that belongs to ecosystems that lie within the land. The relatively

small 7.54% drop in forest land from 1995 to 2007 is deceiving, as Table 2 reveals that around a

massive 10,500 acres of land utilized as forest land in 1995 were no longer used as forest land

come 2007. The nearly 20% increase in land area devoted to urban land in Atlantic County from

1995 to 2007 indicates that the vast majority of land previously used as forest, Barren, or

agricultural land in 1995, and altered by 2007 went towards the growing urban land area.

To answer the question of where exactly in Atlantic County these land use changes took

place, land use maps of the county were created on arc GIS. Figure 3 shows a map comparing

forest land in Atlantic County in 1995 (in green) and in 2007 (in blue):
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Figure 3: Map Comparing Forest Land in Atlantic County in 1995 (Green) to Forest Land in

Atlantic County in 2007 (Blue). Source: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

(2019)

Essentially anything that is green on the map in Figure 3 can be considered land that was

forest in 1995 and no longer forest in 2007. On the eastern side of Atlantic County, there are

fairly noticeable areas of land that were considered as forest land in 1995 that were no longer

considered as forest land come the year 2007. Also, relatively large amounts of land in the

middle-eastern part of the county that were considered as forest land in 1995 were no longer

under the same classification in 2007.

To observe where changes in Barren Land occurred in Atlantic County from 1995 to

2007, a map was created of the county displaying only Barren Land for the years of 1995 and
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2007. Figure 4 shows a map of Atlantic County’s Barren Lands in 1995 (brown) and in 2007

(green):

Figure 4: Map Comparing Barren Land in Atlantic County in 1995 (Brown) to Barren Land in

Atlantic County in 2007 (Green). Source: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

(2019)

Any part of the map in Figure 4 that is visibly brown is land that was classified as Barren

Land in the year 1995, but not in 2007. A relatively large area of land that was Barren Land in

1995 but was not in 2007 is located in the same middle-eastern part of the county where

deforestation occurred in Figure 3.

For the land use type that expanded over the period of time from 1995 to 2007, a map

showing urban land in Atlantic County in 1995 and in 2007 is shown in Figure 5:
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Figure 5: Map of Urban Land in Atlantic County in 1995. Source: New Jersey Department of

Environmental Protection (2019)

In Figure 5, any area on the map that is blue is land that was not considered as urban land

in 1995, but was considered as urban land in 2007. In the part of the county where Barren Land

and forest land were witnessed to decrease in Figures 3 and 4, urbanized land in middle of the

county, slightly to the southeast, became noticeably larger by 2007. This area of the county,

where the Garden State Parkway lies, is where a substantial amount of the approximately 12,000

acres of new urban land resides. This location would make sense, as the Garden State Parkway is

New Jersey’s most crowded highway, making it a desirable spot for development to occur. Maps

of Atlantic County including all forms of land use for the years of 1986, 1995, 2002, 2007, and

2012 are found in the appendix at the end of this report.

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Conclusion:

Atlantic County has faced, and continues to face, a dilemma that inherently comes along

with the rising demand for urban expansion at the cost of land that was previously used for other,

perhaps more environmentally friendly purposes. This was glaringly evident in the first part of

this exercise, which involved observing aerial photos of Galloway, New Jersey and identifying

changes in land use. It could be observed that areas of land in Galloway classified as forest land

in 2002 were altered in order to allow for the construction of a new shopping center and gas

station by the year 2007. The second part of this exercise, which involved finding, downloading,

and interpreting land use data for Atlantic County over the years of 1986 to 2012 continued to

reveal that land previously utilized as forest land was the type forced to sacrifice the greatest area

to the growing urbanization of Atlantic County. While forest lands lost the greatest aggregate

area, the land use type impacted the most was Barren Land. Over 35% of land in Atlantic County

that was classified as Barren Land in 1995 no longer carried that same classification in 2007. The

impacts of transforming large amounts of forest land and large percentages of Barren Lands into

urban lands, which grew by nearly 20% from 1995 to 2007, grow larger as one delves deeper

into the issue. Perhaps the most popular issue associated with urbanization at the cost of forest

and Barren Land is the damage done to the ecosystems that call each land use type home.

However, more issues come along with this topic including erosion of local soils and loss of

resources, as well as broader scale issues including a potential increase in greenhouse gas

emissions, salinization, and deforestation. While the Pinelands National Reserve serves as

somewhat of a blockade to the complete urbanization of Atlantic County, the environmentally

harmful land use impacts of widespread expansion of urban lands are still very much evident in

the county.
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References:
Ameztegui, Aitor; Brotons, Lluis; Coll, Lluis; Ninot, Joseph (2016). Land-use legacies rather

than climate change are driving the recent upward shift of the mountain tree line in the

Pyrenees.http://arxiudigital.ctfc.cat/docs/upload/27_520_Ameztegui_et_al-Global_Ecolo

gy_and_Biogeography.pdf

The Environmental Literacy Council (2015). Land Use. https://enviroliteracy.org/land-use/

Kniivila, Matleena (2004). Land Degradation and Land Use/Cover Data Sources.

https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ENVIRONMENT/envpdf/landdatafinal.pdf

NJDEP (2012). Land Use 2012 Code List.

https://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/digidownload/metadata/lulc12/codelist2012.html

NJDEP (2019). Open Data Webpage. https://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/listall.html

NJGIN (2019). Information Warehouse. https://njgin.state.nj.us/OGIS_IW/

Pinelands Commission (2015). CMP Summary. https://www.nj.gov/pinelands/cmp/summary/

United States National Aeronautic and Space Administration (1996). 1.2.2.2. Barren Land.

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/iwgsdi/Barren_Land.html
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Appendix:

Figure 6: Snip of digital orthoquads over Galloway Township, New Jersey from 1995

Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network (2019)

Figure 7: Snip of digital orthoquads over Galloway Township, New Jersey from 2002

Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network (2019)

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Figure 8: Snip of digital orthoquads over Galloway Township, New Jersey from 2007 Source:

New Jersey Geographic Information Network (2019)

Figure 9: Snip of digital orthoquads over Galloway Township, New Jersey from 2012

Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network (2019)

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Figure 10: Snip of digital orthoquads over Galloway Township, New Jersey from 2015

Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network (2019)

Figure 11: Land Use Map of Atlantic County in 1986. Source: New Jersey Department of

Environmental Protection (2019)

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Figure 12: Land Use Map of Atlantic County in 1995. Source: New Jersey Department of

Environmental Protection (2019)

Figure 13: Land Use Map of Atlantic County in 2002. Source: New Jersey Department of

Environmental Protection (2019)

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Figure 14: Land Use Map of Atlantic County in 2007. Source: New Jersey Department of

Environmental Protection (2019)

Figure 15: Land Use Map in Atlantic County in 2012. Source: New Jersey Department of

Environmental Protection (2019)