The goal of this ongoing project, “Tracking New Jersey’s Dynamic Landscape: A Municipal Report Card on Urban Growth and Open Space Loss,” is to promote a better understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns of development and land use change in our highly dynamic state. More specifically, this project provides a snapshot of New Jersey’s landscape as of 2002, analyzing the changes between 1995 and 2002, and examining the implications of these trends. In addition to examining urban growth and open space loss at statewide and county scales, we are assessing municipal level changes as part of the Municipal Report Card. This project is funded by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. The research team consists of Dr. Richard Lathrop and John Bognar of the Rutgers University Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis and Dr. John Hasse of the Department of Geography at Rowan University.
The project updates our earlier work on this same topic that examined urban growth and associated land use change from 1986 to 1995 (for more information go to http://crssa.rutgers.edu/projects/lc/urbangrowth/index.html). This earlier work has had a broad impact on the public’s understanding of the pace of development, sprawl and open space and has influenced statewide policies on land use planning and management. Our goal with this project is similarly to inform the public and government agencies about land use change issues and the overall state of New Jersey’s landscape. Bringing this information down to the municipal level is vital to inform citizens and policy makers alike on what is happening in their local community.
The project is making use of the updated 2002 New Jersey Land Use/ Land Cover (LU/LC) data set that was released by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in January 2007. This GIS dataset is one of the most highly detailed and accurate statewide GIS databases in the nation and was developed using color infrared digital orthophotography acquired in the spring of 2002. This 2002 data set updates the existing statewide digital maps of LU/LC for 1986 and 1995. The GIS data set is available through the NJ Geographic Information Network (NJGIN) website http://njgin.state.nj.us/.
Preliminary results of the study confirm that development pressure has continued at a remarkably robust rate during the 1995 – 2002 time period with urban development increasing statewide by 105,988 acres. A corresponding amount of open space was lost consisting of farmland, forest and wetlands. The data also show that some regions of the state increased the rate of development faster than others and that in some areas there has been an especially significant increase in the rate of upland forest conversion. Please refer to the press release for more information.
Ongoing work includes the assessment of five key Land Resource Impact (LRI) Indicators. The LRI indicators examine the impact of new development on five specific critical land resources including:
1) urban growth density (i.e., efficiency of land utilization);
2) prime farmland loss;
3) core forest habitat loss;
4) natural wetlands loss; and
5) impervious surface cover gain.
