New Jersey's recent pattern of landscape change mirrors urban growth patterns occurring throughout the nation and many regions throughout the world. The above animated sequence demonstrates the nation-wide pattern of urban growth experienced during the last quarter of the 20th century. The animation was developed from mapping produced by the USGS for their Urban Dynamic Research Program which monitors patterns of urban growth over time. The 1995 data is derived from a dataset of city lights assembled by NOAA using 231 nighttime orbits of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (Elvidge et al.,in press). The 1975 data is from Digital Chart of the World, a dataset derived by the Defense Mapping Agency from the Operational Navigation Chart (ONC) map series.