Boyd's Legacy Landscape of the United States 1975

boydsmaps

This map is hosted locally at boydsmaps.com

Link to this metadata:
boydsmaps.com/mapinfo/nlcd1975.html

Link to this map:
boydsmaps.com/#10.00/46.854046/-121.761617/nlcd1975/0.00/0.00

Originally published: July 10, 2025

Most recent update: none

Resolution: 125 feet (38.2 meters)

Map Tiles: 420,000

Size: 2.9 gb

Data Sources

US Geological Survey - Data Series 240
Enhanced Historical Land-Use and Land-Cover Data Sets
pubs.usgs.gov/ds/2006/240/

NASA EarthData
ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model
earthdata.nasa.gov/data/catalog/lpcloud-astgtm-002

Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC)
Annual National Land Cover Database
1985 Impervious Descriptor (direct download link for .zip file)
www.mrlc.gov/downloads/sciweb1/shared/mrlc/data-bundles/

Description

This first map in the "Landscape" series is very different from the others: it's based on historical data traced from topo maps and aerial photographs. The other maps in the series are based on Landsat imagery where each pixel is assigned a value. This map has a different look, with more generalized features and less detail. We are calling it "Legacy Landscape" to highlight this difference. From the metadata:

The original digital data sets were created by the USGS in the late 1970s and early 1980s and were later converted by USGS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to a geographic information system (GIS) format in the early 1990s. These data were made available on USEPA's Web site since the early 1990s and have been used for many national applications, despite minor coding and topological errors. During the 1990s, a group of USGS researchers made modifications to the data set for use in the National Water-Quality Assessment Program. These edited files have been further modified to create a more accurate, topologically clean, and seamless national data set. Several different methods, including custom editing software and several batch processes, were applied to create this enhanced version of the national data set.

The source dataset uses a great deal more classifications than the 16 NLCD types used for the other maps in this series.

Residental
Commercial and services
Industrial
Transportation, communication, utilities
Industrial and commercial complexes
Mixed urban or built-up land
Other urban or built-up land
Cropland and pasture
Orchards, groves, vineyards, nurseries, and ornamental horticultural
Confined feeding operations
Other agricultural land
Herbaceous rangeland
Shrub and brush rangeland
Mixed rangeland
Deciduous forest land
Evergreen forest land
Mixed forest land
Streams and canals
Lakes
Reservoirs
Bays and estuaries
Forested wetland
Nonforested wetland
Dry salt flats
Beaches
Sandy areas not beaches
Bare exposed rock
Strip mines, quarries, gravel pits
Transitional areas
Mixed Barren Land
Shrub and brush tundra
Herbaceous tundra
Bare ground
Wet tundra
Mixed tundra
Perennial snowfields
Glaciers

The exact time period of this dataset isn't completely clear. We used the year 1975 in the title, but that is somewhat arbitrary. Comparing the map to historical aerial imagery in the Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey region, this map clearly reflects conditions in the 1970's and not the 80's. For example, it shows the Commodore Barry Bridge over the Delaware River as being under construction. This matches 1972 aerial imagery. The bridge opened in 1974. In reality, the map probably has features from a range of dates in the 1970's, depending on the specific location.

The original data does not really include roads, except some major interstate highways. This gave it a very incomplete look when compared to the other maps in the series, so we looked for a period-correct source of low-resolution road data and didn't find much. For an earlier version of this map, we used 2012 data which only included major routes and no minor/local roads. That still looked bad when compared to the 1985 Landsat-based map. Next, we thought of using roads from the old USGS Digital Line Graphics (DLG) topo maps and followed a maze of circular links that led to a page saying "USGS DLG's are no longer available thru EarthExplorer as of April 8, 2025." Missed it by just three months!

The historical NLCD imagery was all re-processed in 2024 with data from other sources and AI/deep learning to bring out more detail. One new feature is the "Impervious Descriptor" which allows you to filter out everything but the roads. So, we used the 1985 NLCD roads in this map. It would have been nice to find road data from the 1970's, but this is pretty close.

Like all of the maps in the Landscape series, ASTER GDEM data from 2009-2011 is used for the 3d surface; you may see some "ghost" features in the terrain (buildings, roads) that did not yet exist in the 1970's.

Notes

In addition to this map, the Landscape series features 40 annual maps spanning the period 1985 through 2024.

You can use our Sync app to compare different years.

Credits

United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and USGS scientists

Annual NLCD team at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS) in Sioux Falls, SD

US Geological Survey (USGS), 2024 Annual NLCD Collection 1 Science Products: USGS data release, doi.org/10.5066/P94UXNTS

ASTER GDEM is a product of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and NASA.

NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model. NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, 2009, doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.002

Resources

United States Geological Survey
Land Use and Land Cover Digital Data from 1:250,000 and 1:100,000 Scale Maps
(PDF version, originally converted to HTML by Ben Discoe in 1998)
boydsmaps.com/mapinfo/docs/lulc_data_users_guide_4.pdf

United States Geological Survey
Enhanced Historical Land-Use and Land-Cover Data Sets Metadata
boydsmaps.com/mapinfo/docs/historical_usgs_lulc_datasets.pdf

United States Geological Survey
Annual NLCD - The Next Generation of Land Cover Mapping
boydsmaps.com/mapinfo/docs/fs20253001.pdf

United States Geological Survey
Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Collection 1 Science Product User Guide
mapinfo/docs/LSDS-2103_NLCD_User_Guide_v11.pdf

NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, Joint Japan-US ASTER Science Team
ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model Version 2 – Summary of Validation Results
mapinfo/docs/Summary_GDEM2_validation_report_final.pdf

Use Constraints

This map is © 2025 Boyd Ostroff with all rights reserved. It is provided free of charge for personal, non-commercial, non-organizational use but is not open source software. It may not be published or re-distributed in any form without the written consent of the author. Reasonable usage of map screenshots is permitted as long as they are attributed to boydsmaps.com (preferably with a link to the actual map).

Distribution Liability

Unless otherwise stated, all data, metadata and related materials are considered to satisfy the quality standards relative to the purpose for which the data were collected. Although these data and associated metadata have been reviewed for accuracy and completeness and approved for release by the US Geological Survey (USGS), no warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the display or utility of the data for other purposes, nor on all computer systems, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.

Map software is provided "as is", without any express or implied warranty. In no event will boydsmaps.com be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. The user assumes all risks associated with the use of this software. boydsmaps.com will not be held responsible for any inaccuracies and no responsibility is assumed for damages or other liabilities due to errors, installation, accuracy, availability, use or misuse of the data presented.