Historic landcover and recent landscape change in the north Indian River Lagoon Watershed, Florida, USA

Terrestrial landcover features within watersheds greatly influence aquatic systems. Humans have settled primarily in coastal regions putting tremendous stress on coastal aquatic systems. The Indian River Lagoon (IRL), located along Florida's Atlantic coast, is one of North America's most diverse estuaries Surrounded by a rapidly growing human population. To quantify changes that have occurred within the watershed, we produced landcover maps representing the northern portion of the Indian River Lagoon watershed for 1920, 1943. and 1990. The 1943 and 1990 maps were generated by photo interpretation and the 1920 map was produced by spatial modeling techniques. All anthropogenic landcover types increased throughout the study period, while all native landcover types decreased, with the exception of hammocks. The dominant, terrestrial landcover types in 1920 were flatwoods, scrub, and freshwater marsh. In 1943, flatwoods and scrub types were still dominant, but agriculture was the third most abundant type. In 1990 urban became the dominate landcover with flatwoods second and agriculture third. The remaining natural areas have been highly fragmented by roads, canals, and urban areas. Shoreline composition has changed, with 1% of the Indian River Lagoon study shoreline being comprised of urban in 1920 and 26% in 1990. This dataset is useful for identifying changes in functional landcover, which will help improve the management of resources within the IRL watershed and support important ecological studies investigating the relationships between nature and anthropogenic influences.