Connecticut's Changing Landscape (CCL)

Basic Land Cover Information Showing Changes to CT's Landscape Since 1985

Go to Changing Landscape v2.3

Download Data (Land Cover and Forest Fragmentation)

Please be sure that you understand the data and its appropriate (and inappropriate) uses. Visit the About the Project page for more information about how the maps were produced, metadata information, frequently asked questions, cautions about how to interpret data and for land cover category descriptions that explain what each land cover class represents.

All data are Connecticut State Plane NAD83 feet and are zipped. You must have winzip to extract the files. Get winzip for free.

Looking for shapfiles? We do not provide them here, but have some information and instructions below.

Connecticut Forest Fragmentation (1985-2006)

1985-2006 Statewide Land Cover

Entire Study Area	Connecticut	By Planning Region

*The area includes the state of Connecticut, all local watershed basins that intersect the state, and all towns (including MA) in the Quinebaug-Shetucket National Heritage Corridor.

The following zip files contain .img files and .rrd files. The .img files contain the pixel data and the .rrd files are pyramid layers that help drawing speed.

Entire Study Area

(includes all of Connecticut, and intersecting watersheds of NY, RI, and MA)

Imagine format (*.img)

1985
(3.0 Mb)

1990
(3.0 Mb)

1995
(3.1 Mb)

2002
(3.1 Mb)

2006
(3.3 Mb)

Change
(5.6 Mb)

Connecticut

Imagine format (*.img)

1985
(2.6 Mb)

1990
(2.7 Mb)

1995
(2.7 Mb)

2002
(2.8 Mb)

2006
(2.8 Mb)

Change
(5.0 Mb)

Don't know what planning region your town belongs to? Click here.

Planning Region

Capitol Region	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (2.3 Mb)	Change (0.9 Mb)
Central Connecticut	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.5 Mb)	Change (0.2 Mb)
Central Naugatuck Valley	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (1.0 Mb)	Change (0.4 Mb)
Connecticut River Estuary	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.5 Mb)	Change (0.2 Mb)
Greater Bridgeport	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.5 Mb)	Change (0.2 Mb)
Housatonic Valley	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (1.0 Mb)	Change (0.4 Mb)
Litchfield Hills	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (1.1 Mb)	Change (0.3 Mb)
Midstate	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.7 Mb)	Change (0.3 Mb)
Non-Member INCLUDES UNION	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.2 Mb)	Change (0.1 Mb)
Northeastern Connecticut EXCLUDES UNION	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (1.1 Mb)	Change (0.4 Mb)
Northwestern Connecticut	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.9 Mb)	Change (0.3 Mb)
South Central Connecticut	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (1.2 Mb)	Change (0.5 Mb)
Southeastern Connecticut	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (1.6 Mb)	Change (0.6 Mb)
Southwestern Connecticut	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.8 Mb)	Change (0.3 Mb)
Valley	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.2 Mb)	Change (0.1 Mb)
Windham	Imagine (*.img)	Land Cover (all 5 dates) (0.9 Mb)	Change (0.3 Mb)

If You are Looking for Shapefiles . . .

We do not provide shapefiles for this version of land cover primarily because of the large file sizes and also because it is so easy to do the conversion in ArcMap. See instructions below. Before doing the conversion, be sure you actually need shapfiles. For simple viewing and analyses, the rasters work as well, and sometimes better than shapfefiles. If you are still having trouble or have questions, email us at clear@uconn.edu.

It is easy to convert these raster files to shapefiles in ArcMap. We highly recommend doing the conversion on small geographic areas. Statewide land cover shapefiles are unwieldy to work with and are very large files (200 MB+).

First, download the raster files from this page.

In ArcToolbox, locate the Conversion Toolbox and the From Raster Tools.

Open the Raster to Polygon tool.

Select the Input raster file.

Select the Field. We recommend selecting Class so that the attribute table will have both gridcode and class_name. If you select Value, that works too.

UNCHECK simplify polygons. That's important.
That's it!