Land Cover Maps A Las Vegas, Nevada, USA story
Cities
Deserts
Water
The images displayed in this section show a different way of looking at change over time. These images are part of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), generated and distributed by the USGS EROS Center and a group of federal agencies called the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium.
NLCD portrays land cover change spatially as a comprehensive “wall-to-wall” 30-meter resolution database. Its national coverage supports many different applications: fire, urban development, insect damage, mining, best practices in land management, and more.
NLCD is based on multiple dates of Landsat imagery captured across the growing season, which is combined with other ancillary data in models to finalize the products. The available editions of NLCD are from 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016.
The legend below shows which colors correspond to the different types of land cover. For example, red indicates impervious surface. This means developed, or built-up, land. Pink is less intensively developed urban areas, and darker red is more intensively developed. Urban land shows the most obvious change seen in these NLCD maps of Las Vegas.
The dominant land cover surrounding Las Vegas is “shrub/scrub,” which is shown as tan. These areas are dominated by shrubs less than 5 meters tall.
Location
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2006, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2011, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA Additional Imagery & Stories
Change Animation
If you could speed up time and watch a fast-growing city like Las Vegas change, what would it look like? From the perspective of the Landsat satellite...
Impervious Surface
NLCD images of western Las Vegas show that much more urban expansion took place here between 2001 and 2006 than over the next 5 years. The land cover ...
Lake Las Vegas
Between 1986 and 1992, a lake appeared east of the city, along Las Vegas Wash, a riparian area. This is Lake Las Vegas, a privately owned lake that is...
Lake Mead
How is Las Vegas getting enough water for its expanding population? Most of it comes from Lake Mead on the Colorado River. The Colorado River provides...
Near Lake Mead
These close-up NLCD images show the water level changes to western Lake Mead. The water classification (blue) changes to barren ground (gray) as the l...
Southwestern Las Vegas
Zooming in on the southwestern portion of the city reveals further urban and suburban changes. McCarran International Airport expanded in this timefra...
Western Urban Expansion
In these false-color images, bright green indicates vegetation. As the city expands, you can see a sort of land cover succession as people build on th...