College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Center for Land Use Education and Research
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About Land Cover | About Impervious Cover | About Riparian Areas Land Cover
This project was funded by the federal/state partnership Long Island Sound Study (LISS), a National Estuary Program. It is intended to give resource managers, researchers, and the public information about the way the landscape draining into the Sound has changed over the time period from 1985 to 2010. Because this time span is approximately the same as that of the LISS itself, it is a particularly apt dataset for those seeking insight into the land use-derived challenges to the health of the Sound, and our joint progress toward meeting these challenges. This study is an update and a geographic expansion of CLEAR’s Connecticut’s Changing Landscape project, which has been ongoing since 2004. Because of this, some informational links about data and techniques will take the viewer to parts of the original project
The maps and information included in this project (except for the summary maps) are organized by the watershed level known as Hydrologic Unit Code 12, or “HUC-12,” the smallest of the available basins delineated by the US Geological Survey. There are 195 HUC-12 basins within the study area, averaging about 30 square miles (19,256 acres) in area. They range from just over 3.5 square miles (2346 acres) to 62 square miles (39,655 acres).
HUCs Explained: The United States Geological Survey created a hierarchical system of hydrologic units originally called regions, sub-regions, accounting units, and cataloging units. Each unit was assigned a unique Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC). As of 2010 there are six levels in the hierarchy, represented by hydrologic unit codes from 2 to 12 digits long, called regions, subregions, basins, subbasins, watersheds, and subwatersheds.
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