Land Use/Land Cover Change Assessment of Dane County, Wisconsin : Contemporary Trend and Future Projections

Abstract

Assessing changes in land use and land cover (LULC) is a very important component of monitoring the health and sustainability of ecological systems. Remote sensing technology is a powerful tool utilized for the assessment of current trends in land change and more importantly when coupled with spatially explicit predictive land change models can be instrumental in generating future composition and configuration of a landscape. These tools can provide useful information that can be integrated in land and general ecosystem planning and management. Dane County, which houses Wisconsin's state capital of Madison has seen an increase in urban LULC and some decrease in forest land use over the past decade. However, no complete data exists on the configuration, composition,and trajectory of LULC in Dane County. This study was undertaken to provide an all-encompassing assessment of contemporary changes in Dane County's urban LULC and more importantly to probe into the future state of this phenomenon.