High Resolution Land Cover Data Lessons Learned
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To model, track, and manage statewide progress toward reaching water quality goals, the Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership (CBPP)—a regional partnership that helps lead, direct, and manage restoration efforts in the Chesapeake Bay—relies heavily on land use and land cover data. Before 2015, CBPP calculated watershed states’ pollution contribution numbers using the 30-meter resolution National Land Cover Database (NLCD). However, NLCD often fails to match the accuracy and resolution of local datasets being employed by state and county planners. This has resulted in inconsistencies when comparing local evaluations with CBPP's modeling, which has made planning, implementation, and reporting very difficult.
CBPP recognized that having a high-resolution land cover dataset for the entire watershed and surrounding counties would not only improve their ability to quantify the effects of existing and in- progress restoration, but also would have very real implications on planning new restoration projects. Thus, in 2015, CBPP commissioned a high-resolution land cover dataset for the Watershed. Three main contractors, the Chesapeake Conservancy (CC), the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Laboratory (UVM), and Esri partner WorldView Solutions, Inc. (WVS), created a one-meter-resolution dataset for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and all the counties that intersect its boundaries. Within the project geography, CC classified Maryland, New York, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia; UVM was responsible for Delaware and Pennsylvania; and WVS covered Virginia (Figure 1). This groundbreaking product covers over 100,000 square miles, and has a resolution of one meter.