Land use Changes in Monmouth County and Neptune Township

Gage Furrow
Stockton University
Envl 4300

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 Abstract

Land use data is integral to creating, operating, and maintaining an efficient and productive
society that has the possibility of change, growth, and resource preservation. Land use data can
be examined by looking at hard data in tables, spread sheets, or they can be turned into
geospatial data using programs like ArcMap 10.4 (a type of geographical information system) to
be represented visually. This examination of land use in Monmouth county New Jersey and one
of its Municipalities, Neptune Township used both forms. Shape file data was sources from the
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and was imported into ArcMap
10.4 to create hard data tables and maps to represent the different land uses in the county and
township. The land uses examined were water, wetlands, agriculture, forest, urban, and barren
land. These land use categories also compared across five different years to show change over
time. Those years were 1986, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2012. To show the most recent and
applicable changes the year sets 2002 and 2012 were focused on specifically for discussion but
other interesting observations are addressed in the conclusion. The Monmouth countys map and
data set held the most significant change was water use which increased by 4565.6 percent (data
in acres). The expected rise in urban population was balanced by a decrease in forest and
agriculture land. Wetland data showed and interesting trend across the years but the change was
not worth further discussion. Neptune also showed similar trends for Urban, forest, and
agriculture land. Water was again the most significant change here between 2002 and 2012 with
a 466807.4 percent increase. The huge increase in water use for Neptune is credited to software
malfunction in the way it identified its boarders because it counts a large section of ocean
bordering coast as part of water land use. The large increase for Monmouth County cannot be
represented visually in this map because to view the water additions, one must zoom very far
into the map and presenting visual data like that is unrealistic in this form of paper. Finally aerial
photographs were sourced from the NJgin website and we conducted our own physical
examination of land use in our towns. This data was nearly impossible to detect changes in land
use with the human eye.

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 Table of Contents
Chapter Page
Abstract..i
Introduction4
Objective Statement...4
Methods..4
Results/Discussion.5
Conclusion..15
Works cited/References..16

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Introduction
If infrastructure is the life blood of a society then land use is its skeleton. Within a state, county,
or general municipality. All of the land contained within has a designated use from which it is
utilized in its capacity. Land use data is there for integral for determining the best and most
productive sites on which housing, agriculture, water, and other types of land uses are placed. By
continually reviewing land use data, governing bodies can see exactly what spaces are
underutilized and what infrastructure it being productive. The transition from traditional
surveying methods to fly over photograph coupled with Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) has brought this art into the modern era making this data readily accessible and easily
manipulated and communicated. This project looked six different land uses over a period of five
separate years so see how land changes in our New Jersey county and home town. Those land
uses were Water, Wetlands, Agriculture, Urban, Forest, and Barren Land. The Years looked at
were 1986, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2012.

Objective statement:
The objective of this lab was to understand how to download land use/land cover data from the
ArcGIS online data resource from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection GIS
site and convert it using ArcMap 10.4 to create and compare land use maps of our counties and
hometowns.

Methods:
The first step in creating these land use maps was going to the NJ DEPs webpage. Next
you select the GIS data tab and then select the Digital Data Downloads tab. From there in the all
layers drop down bar you select the desired land use year. From then you download all of the
shape files that the web page provided map that completely cover your county broader. Once that
is done for each year, you can import all of the necessary files into ArcMap.
After all the data is down loaded we first imported a shape file of our county from
previous work (lab two in this case). Next the data for your desired year is imported into ArcMap
you use the merge tool in the geoprocessing tab to merge all of the layers. Once all of the desired
layers are merged, you use the clipping tool to clip the county shape file to the merged layers.
You end up with all of the land use data of your county for that year. You then repeat this
process for all of the years you are looking at.
To get the land use for your town you import the municipalities map from lab two (you
can also get it from the DEP website as well). You then right click on the municipalitys layer
and select the attribute table. In the attribute table you find your town and select that row. Then
write clicking the layer tab again you click data and export the data as a new layer. When the
outline map of your town shows up you then clip it to the land use map of your county you just
made for that year. Do this same process for all years.

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 To find the land use designations you want, you simple use the quarry tool in the attribute
table. You use bullion operators couple with key words you can find in the attributer table. This
quarry will highlight all of the data within the range you specified and you can them use the
summary statistics function for find the total number of acers for that land use. Do this same
process for all land uses and years in both your county and home town. Put all acreage data into a
table (excel works well). Compare data as needed.
To make the aerial photos for our own variation you go to the link provided on the
Envl4300 weebly. The link takes you to the njgin website that is already set up for New Jersey.
You then zoom in to your home town on the map and select the desired orthophotography year
from the select dataset to download dropdown menu. You then use the snipping tool in the
computer to nip the image to your desired dimensions. Next you save it to your desired location
and from there you can import it into word.
Results/Discussion:

Land USE (arcres) 1986 1995 2002 2007 2012 % change 2002 and 20012
Urban 112823.8 126434.7 124855.2 147581.2 149495.5 19.7
Wetlands 61603.82 60544.61 58780.43 56775.14 57762.32 -1.7
Barren 4987.65 5980.746 4090.27 4717.54 4275.111 4.5
Forest 57442.64 58182.44 59620.6 51705.67 52695.59 -11.6
Agriculture 61056.31 57926.3 57061.6 44608.56 42786.95 -25.0
Water 3528.39 181422.4 4936.039 45646.32 230293.6 4565.6
total used acres 301442.6 490491.3 309344.2 351034.4 537309.1 73.7
Table 1. This figure shows the total acreage per land use, total acres used per year, and percent change between land uses
between 2002 and 2012 in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

In Monmouth County the greatest percent increase between 2002 and 2012 was water at
4565.6 percent. The greatest percent decrease was agriculture at -25 percent. The next greatest
increase was urban at 19.7 percent and the next greatest decrease was forest at -11.6 percent.
The most significant change for Monmouth County is defiantly the Increase in water.
From 2002 to 2012, water use land went from 4936 acres to 230293 acres. That difference is
255357 acres. This cannot be the result of development. The software that looked at the aerial
photos must have changed and incorporated existing water bodies and salt marshes to get such a
large increase. The significant change 2012 can be seen in figures 1. The data in the table shows
a total acreage gain of 255357 acres. This does not match the map below. However, the zoomed
in map shows much more small water bodies in fairly high density that cannot be seen from the
current view of the map. This is also the reason the new water land use doesnt really appear on
the map, it is too small to see. I know this is not a data problem because I went back twice to
check the numbers.

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Figure 1: This figure is a map of the increase in water land use in Monmouth County from 2002 (blue) to 2012 (red).

The next largest changes being agriculture, urban, and forest land uses make sense to me
because there is fairly proportional urban and barren increase to agriculture decrease. The forest
decrease doesnt match up with anything very well but the total used acres in 2012 did increase
so the county boundaries could have changed to acquire more land or other land use types that
we did not look at decreased.

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Figure 2: This figure shows the acres given to agriculture in 2002 (light green) and the 25 percent decrease shown in orange for
2012.

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Figure 3: This figure shows the 19.7 percent increase in urban land use where urban for 2002 is shown in red and the increase to
2012 in blue.

When looking the urbanization growth, showing in blue in the map above when compared to the
agriculture and forested land maps, urban growth is the biggest reason for the decrease in those
uses especially in the center of the map.

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Figure 4: This figure shows the 11.6 percent decrease of forested land from 2002 (green) to what is was in 2012 (red).

Land USE (acres) 1986 1995 2002 2007 2012 % change 2002 and 2012
Urban 14867.31 4550.168 4728.011 4906.881 4957.452 4.9
Wetlands 691.52 131.001 558.095 572.3458 614.1261 10.0
Barren 86.5 114.58 176.5614 137.6685 126.156 -28.5
Forest 759.35 199.501 805.1172 676.3669 642.3388 -20.2
Agriculture 45.01 56.227 58.4548 53.27069 26.9206 -53.9
Water 33.39 54050.391 39.91002 822.8061 186342.9 466807.4
Total used Acres 16483.08 59101.868 6366.149 7169.34 192709.8 2927.1
Table 2. This figure shows the total acreage per land use, total acres used per year, and percent change between land uses
between 2002 and 2012 in Neptune Township, New Jersey.

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 The most significant change between land uses for 2002 and 2012 is water. This is a
466807.4 percent change. The difference between them is 466767.5 acres. The next greatest
change is agriculture which shows a 53.9 percent decrease. The third greatest change is a
reduction in barren land of 28.5 percent. The fourth greatest change is forested land at a decrease
of 20.2 percent.

Figure 5: This Figure shows the increase in water use land from 2002 (blue) to 2012 (red). Both colors together represent the total
amount of water land in 2012.

The acre gap between these years is so immense because the software is including ocean water
on the right most side of the map as well as may more lakes.

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Figure 6: This figure is a side by side comparison of acres of agriculture land use in 2002 (on left/green) versus 2012 (on
right/purple).

Figure 7: This figure shows the reduction in barren land use from 2002 (shown in brown) to 2012 (shown in teal).

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Figure 8: This figure shows the reduction in forest land use from 2002 (green) to 2012 (red is no longer forested).

Figure 9: This figure shows the Neptunes urban land use in 2002 (red) and its growth in 2012 (blue).

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Looking at the urban growth map we can see that much of the reduction in forest and agriculture
land was due to the increase in urban land use and wetlands when compared to the complete
2012 map of the town.

Figure 10: This figure shows total land use in Neptune township in 2012 (urban-red, barren-brown, water-blue, wetlands-yellow,
forest-green, agriculture-light green).

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1995 2002

2007 2012
Figure 11: This figure shows aerial photographs of Neptune Township from 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2012).

Based on these land uses photos, the dominant urban land use I can discern is urban. The
only thing I can make out besides the central water body (Shark River) is that everything is
covered by urban sprawl. The only interesting thing I can see is the change in shape of the beach
over the years and that is due to erosion and human re-sanding of the beaches.

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Conclusion:
Land use maps dont always proportionately represent the data that they are generated
from. The water land use for both Monmouth County and Neptune township maps are both good
examples of this. To me both had total acreages that should have both looked much bigger when
turned into a map (especially Neptune). Scaling was defiantly the issue for Monmouth County
because as I played around with the map size I found that just to show the data visually, I would
have had to have cut that particular map into at least ten pieces and blown them up. In this case
(especially because the numbers were triple checked) the table data will have to suffice. Another
thing that I saw firsthand was that the software that determines land use us flawed because in the
Neptune map, there was a section that boarders the ocean and actual ocean water was included
into the water land use for the town. It is for this reason I believe Neptunes water land was so
high. Agriculture and forested land went down as expected due to the steady increase in
urbanized land. Another source of agriculture and forested land decrease in Neptune was the
steady increase in wetlands across the years but I didnt find this to be very interesting because
these progressions are expected with Clean Water Act. Something that I did find interesting for
all the data (though we were only told to look at 2002 and 2012) was that from 1986 to 2012
wetlands in the whole of Monmouth county decreased slightly every year we had to make maps
for except 2012 where it starts to go back up. I would have made maps for these but the percent
change was so low that I didnt think it would represent well on a map and wasnt significant
enough to bother with.

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Works Cite/acknowledgements:
Bureau of GIS. (2017). Retrieved February 13, 2017, from http://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/
NJGIN's Information Warehouse. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2017, from .
. https://njgin.state.nj.us/NJ_NJGINExplorer/IW.jsp#

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