(Link to Metadata) NRCS mapped historical and current-day built-up lands for Grand Isle County, VT using several vintages of aerial photography: 1941, 1962, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1986, 1995, and 2003. The mapping was done using definitions and protocols established by NRCS in its conduct of the National Resources Inventory (NRI), a statistically based survey, designed and implemented to assess the conditions and trends of soil, water, and related resources on non-federal lands. Two land cover/use categories from the NRI ("urban and small built-up" and "farmsteads") were combined and mapped as 'Built-up'. NRI minimum built-up densities were not adhered to. In addition, total 'developed' lands for 2003 were mapped by integrating the mapped built-up data with roads, both public and private. An approximate 15-page report on definitions, mapping tools and ancillary materials, mapping methodology, and results is included with the data distributed by VCGI. Prepared results include tabular information on built-up change for the County and each of its five towns, 2003 road data, and a graphic depicting built-up acreage changes from 1941-2003. See Builtup_Documentation.doc & Builtup_Prepared_Results.xls included with the data zip file. VCGI converted the orginial NRCS shapefiles to Arc/Info coverage region subclasses. The region naming convention for built-up data is: region.b, for the developed 2003 data the naming convention is: region.dev2003. This "feature dataset" approach allows multiple data sources to be treated as one data set.
