Middlesex Land Use Change

Essai Pichataro, Colin Salotti

ENVL-4300 Environmental Issues

Dr. Tait Chirenje

Stockton University

Spring 2018
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Abstract

Land use change evaluations were conducted for Middlesex County and Monroe

Township. Both of these regions showed significant changes in land use between the years of

1986 and 2012. Land use was broken down into six categories agriculture, barren land, forests,

urban land, water and wetland. These six categories where the primary area of focus when

observing for land change. To determine the amount of land use change that occurred at these

two sites we download data from various online sources that met our date range and interpreted

the datasets in ArcMap. Water and urbanization had the highest positive net change for the two

locations. Water being the most significantly impacting change in Middlesex County establishing

a positive net change of +41207.93 acres. Meanwhile Monroe Township accounted for more

than half of all of Middlesex County agricultural land use loss with a total agricultural land use

negative net change of -8194.34 acres. To further examine land use change in Monroe Township

digital othoquads were reviewed to see if any visual changes could be noticed. To no surprise we

seen and proved what our data was stating which was an overall positive change in urban land

use with an alarming amount of new developments established between the years of 1995 and

2015 which mostly likely account for the negative agricultural land use change that you could

see as well from the digital orthoquads. The information gathered can be very useful in the

making of conservation efforts and land use management plans.

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Table of Contents

I. Abstract……………………………………………………………………...2

II. Introduction………………………………………………………………….4

III. Objectives…………………………………………………………………....5

IV. Methods……………………………………………………………………...6-8

V. Results and Figures…………………………………………………………..8-13

VI. Discussion……………………………………………………………………14

VII. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...15

VIII. References…………………………………………………………………...16

IX. Appendix…………………………………………………………………….17
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Introduction

Middlesex county is located in the northern-central part of New Jersey, USA. It is the

second most populated county in NJ with a population density of about 831,300 residents (1).

The county has topography that is typical to New Jersey which consists of a largely flat

landscape with elevation ranges from sea level to 300 feet. Middlesex county is made up of 25

unique municipalities which are a mix of small towns, urban centers and rural communities. The

largest of these 25 municipalities, by area, is Monroe Township with an approximate area of 43

square miles. In this study we reviewed we reviewed the two locations in depth to determine the

land use changes, if any, that has taken place between 1986 and 2010. To determine this much

information was gathered from online sources and then later interpreted in ArcMap. In ArcMap

we primarily focused on 5 particular land uses which are urban land, agricultural land, forests,

wetland, and land that is used for water. What was primarily observed and recorded from the

data was the acreage used by each land use type. We made observations from 5 sets of data that

was spread between the years of 1986 and 2010. Oppon the review of this data many alarming

conclusions were discovered. Enough evidence to back up that there in fact has been a significant

amount of change between the two locations when evaluating the totals for acreage in each land

use type between the years of 1986 and 2010.

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Objectives

● To understand the land use changes in specific New Jersey counties over times.

● To determine and interpret the changes in land use in Middlesex county and Monroe

Township focusing on 5 primary categories; rural land, agricultural land, forests, wetland

and water.

● To evaluate and express large data files from online sources ranging between the years of

1986 and 2012 in a more consolidated and efficient manner using ArcMap and Excel.

● To be able to determine and interpret land use changes in local neighborhood with the use

of data within the range of 1995 and 2015 in a more efficient manner using ArcMap.

● To be able to interpret digital orthoquads from the NJGIN information warehouse.

Compared the downloaded data to examine land use changes over time.
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Methods

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection provided all of the data

required to complete the tasks that were given for Middlesex County. The land use data for the

year 1986 was separated by counties. The rest of the land use datasets were separated by

watershed management areas. The watershed management areas that were required for years

1995/97, 2002, and 2007 are the following:

● Author Kill (07)

● Lower Raritan, South River, Lawrence (09)

● Millstone (10)

● Monmouth (12)

On the other hand, in the year 2012, the land uses were grouped in terms of subbasins as
opposed to watershed management areas. The subbasin areas that were need for 2012 are as
follows:
● Raritan
● Sandy Hook-Staten Island

Once the data for each watershed management area, for the required years, was

downloaded and imported into ArcMAP, there were several steps that had to be made before one

is able to look at the maps and able to come to conclusions. The next step required using the

geoprocessing tool known as “merge” on the 4 data files for the watershed management areas.

Once the four areas are merged together you have to use another geoprocessing tool known as

“clip” to change the extent in which the data reaches. If you were to place a outline of Middlesex

county over the data that is geographically represented on our maps, you will see that there is

more data than just Middlesex county. By placing a digital outline of Middlesex county in

ArcMAP with the merged watershed management areas, you can clip the excess information out
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of the data files with the ‘clip’ tool mentioned earlier. The end result is a file that contains all of

the land use data for Middlesex county. To display the different land uses one must go into the

symbology tab, which is located in the files properties. Once there, you are able to activate the

different land uses and display them geographically by selecting the correct values in under the

“categories” field. You also have to make sure you change the colors for each land use code.

Our class used the following representations:

● Urban: Red (1000)

● Agriculture: Light Green (2000)

● Forest: Dark Green (4000)

● Water : Blue (5000)

● Wetlands: Yellowish (6000)

● Barren Land: Brown (7000)

Once the different land use codes are displayed in colors, it is much easier to visually see

the changes that have occured in Middlesex county over the past two decades. We used a

program called “Snipping Tool” to take screen captures of MIddlesex county, year by year.

These are displayed in Figure 1.

The shapefile that was downloaded to display an outline of Middlesex county can also

display an outline for all municipalities within its county boundaries. If you click “select by

attributes” in ArcMAP, you are given many options but what you want to click is “MUN” =

“Monroe Township”. Once this search query is applied a blue outline around Monroe Township

will appear. You can then export the selected data, save it as a new shapefile, and then clip your

old land use file that was originally for Middlesex county with the boundaries of Monroe
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Township. Once this is completed, for each year of data that you have downloaded, you will be

able to create screen captures similar to Figure 2. To gather information on how much acreage

was used by each different land use code, one must “Open Attribute Table”. All of the data needs

are either in the table for Middlesex county or Monroe Township.

The orthoquads were very easy to download, for year 1995, I chose an area in Monroe

Township and downloaded the images for each quadrangle. I was then able to do the same for

the year 2015. When it came to placing the images into ArcMAP, all that had to be done was

dragging and dropping the files into the active data layer. I then took screen captures of these

aerial images, similar to in the previous figures.

Results

Middlesex County Land Use Change

After compiling and condensing all the data for the county then determining the net

change two particular land use type really presented themselves out of all the rest. These land use

types where water and urban land showing positive net changes of +41207.93 acres and

+250964.46 acres respectively (Table 1). These two sites along with wetlands where the only

land use types that showed positive increase of the 6 land use types, though wetlands increase in

land use was not as significantly impacting to land uses change as the other two are. While urban

land use increased a more consistent positive rate, water showed a huge spike in increase

between the years of 1986 and 1995/97 boasting a positive increase of +43542.02 acres. This

increase is due to a open tidal bay addition within the time frame 1986 and 1995/97. After that

huge increase in acreage the rest of the water land use increased at a more consistent rate. The

remaining land use types which are agriculture, barren land and forests all showed a negative
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change in land use -14817.07, -3313.02, -2828.99 respectively (Table 1). Although the net

change for urban land was 25094.46 it was not all at the cost of agricultural, barren land and

forest land use which at a combine total of the 3 land use types only add up to 20959.08. This is

still a loss of green land due to urbanization but the outcome could be worse.

Table 1: Middlesex County Land Use Change 1986-2012

Middlesex County (In Acres)

Land Use Type 1986 1995/97 2002 2007 2012 Net

Change

Agriculture 26260.74 19339.64 14945.80 12265.08 11443.67 -14817.07

Barren Land 6828.60 4613.389 4498.38 4021.09 3515.58 -3313.02

Forest 28895.48 29724.12 28645.26 26076.52 26066.01 -2828.99

Urban Land 95575.87 105988.46 112567 118853.01 120670.33 +25094.46

Water 5249.99 48792.01 41155.06 42354.87 46475.91 +41207.93

Wetlands 39994.11 45892.02 42942.8 41338.11 41307.77 +1313.66

​ ​Table 1: Bottom 3 Urban land, water, and wetlands are only land use types to show a positive
increase in net change. Wetland having the most outstanding increase of the 3 primarily in
1995/97.
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Figure 1. Middlesex County Land Use from 1986-2012

Figure 1: Land use change of Middlesex county between the years of 1986 and
2012. Notice the steady increase of Urban land use and steady decrease of
Agriculture.
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Monroe Township Land Use Change

In Monroe Township it was a slightly different story than that of the overall county of

which it belongs to. Similar to Middlesex county, Monroe Township had a positive increase in

land use in the land use types of urban land, water, and wetlands. They displayed an increase of

+5021.41, +254.11, +1822.43 acres respectively (Table 2). Not the most impacting values to the

county but for a township an increase of 5021.41 is quite significant. Agriculture, barren land,

and forests showed a net loss of land of -8194.34, -391.63, -1606.52 respectively (Table 1).

Agriculture took a huge hit in this township accounting for more than half of the total

agricultural land use loss in all of Middlesex county. It is safe to say that the increase of urban

land in this area did come at the expense of green land use types in this township.

Table 2: Monroe Township Land Use Change 1986-2012

Monroe Township (In Acres)

Land Use Type 1986 1995/97 2002 2007 2012 Net

Change

Agriculture 11516.82 6439.13 5151.9 3673.25 3322.48 -8194.34

Barren Land 909.91 915.74 1013.12 800.15 518.28 -391.63

Forest 6226.23 6054.59 5293.74 4681.67 4619.71 -1606.52

Urban Land 7161.41 8029.01 9297.32 11493.79 12182.82 +5021.41

Water 216.44 275.01 376.98 467.18 470.55 +254.11

Wetlands 7521.35 10273.19 9354.40 8873.53 9343.78 +1822.43

Table 2: Urban land, water, and wetlands where again the only land use types that had a
positive net change. Notice the significant negative net change that occured in the agricultural
land use type that accounts for more than half of the total agricultural land use loss for
Middlesex county.
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Figure 2. Monroe Township Land Use from 1986-2012

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Figure 2:Land use change of Monroe Township between the years of 1986 and
1995/97. Notice the vast reduction of agriculture in this area as well as the
almost extinction of barren land form this township.
Monroe Township Orthoquads Land Use Change
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When first observing these two figures you can immediately notice that there is an

obvious increase urban land between the two sets of data. The most urbanization occurred in the

east side of the township where you see an entire new development that was not there before

(Figure 4). Notice that the forest in the northeast portion of the orthoquads through time were

greatly reduce due to the increase urbanization.

Figure 3 Figure 4

Figure 3: Monroe township 1995. Figure 4: Monroe Township 2015.

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Discussion

The results for both Middlesex County and Monroe Township show a very consistent

trend, there is a significant growth in development for urban land uses. We think that this is due

to the area in which Middlesex County is located. Since the county and everything it entails is

located near New York City, it looks like the development is to help support the urban sprawl

from this high density area. There are many higher income cities located inside the township that

help support this claim, such as, New Brunswick, Edison Piscataway, and Woodbridge. The

changes in land use can be summarized by saying that while new urban areas are arising, land

uses for agriculture and barren lands are shrinking. The orthoquad of Monroe Township only

helps support this claim. You can visually see several areas that are undeveloped in Figure 3. that

look very much uninhabitable, but when you look at Figure 4. it is easy to see how these areas

have been developed to help sustain the population’s needs. When looking at the differences

from year to year in Figure 1. It is easy to see that most of the urban land use development

occurs in the central and south-western regions of the county (South Brunswick, North

Brunswick, Milltown, and East Brunswick).

Something that was not discussed in the results was the black areas located on Figure 1.

These areas represented a land use type known as Managed Wetlands. This was seen in the year

1986 exclusively, so we decided that it would be best to ignore it completely since it has changed

to more consistent land uses in the following years.

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Conclusion

Land use change analysis for both Middlesex County and Monroe Township have been

conducted by reviewing data from 1986-2012 which was retrieved from various online sources

(References) and interpreted in detail in ArcMap. Both the sites showed negative net change for

the same land use types of urban land, water, and wetlands. Therefore they also showed

negative net change for the same land use types of agriculture, barren land, and forest. The most

significant positive and negative net change for Middlesex County and for Monroe Township

was water, urban land and agriculture, agriculture respectively. Land use change is a very

important topic to take consideration of, it should be tracked consistently. Accurate tracking of

this can help observe trends and make regional decisions, especially if it refers to designating

new land use to already designated lands. Aside from that it can also be very useful for

conservation efforts in order to devise an appropriate management plan to instill.

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References
NJ Subbasin. 2015. HU8. Retrieved February 13, 2018, from
http://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/digidownload/metadata/lulc12/hu8index.jpg

https://njgin.state.nj.us/NJ_NJGINExplorer/IW.jsp#
Middlesex County. (2018). Middlesex County About. Retrieved February 13, 2018, from
http://www.middlesexcountynj.gov/Pages/Main.aspx

NJDEP LU/LC Statistics Tables by County. 2002-2007 Retrieved February 12, 2018, from
http://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/digidownload/metadata/lulc07/lulc2007stattablescounty.htm

Bureau of GIS. 2018. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from

http://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/listall.html

About. (2018). Monroe Township About Retrieved February 13, 2018, from
http://monroetownshipnj.org/

Monroe Facts. (2018). Monroe Township Monroe Facts. Retrieved February 13, 2018, from
http://www.monroetwp.com/monroe_facts.cfm

NJDEP Division of Land Use Regulation. (2017). Land Use Regulations and Permits. Retrieved
February 13, 2018, from
http://www.nj.gov/dep/landuse/
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Appendix
1) Data Table for Middlesex County Land Use Change
Chart 1: Middlesex County Land Use Change 1986-2012

Chart 1: Visual representation of Table 1. Here you can really see the consistent growth
of urban land use.
Chart 2: Monroe Township Land Use Change 1986-2012

Chart 2: Visual representation of Table 2. Here you can really see not only the consistent
increase of urban land use but as well as the vast consistent deterioration of agricultural land
use type.