Land cover change in the Great Salt Lake basin

This resource holds land cover data used in MS Thesis:
Ghimire, B., (2025), "Investigating Changes in Hydroclimate, Land Cover, and Evapotranspiration across The Great Salt Lake Basin and its Major Subbasins," Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University.

It contains the raster map, data, and Python codes used to estimate land cover class changes within the subbasins of the Great Salt Lake Basin. Publicly available remotely sensed data (raster maps) on land cover from the Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) (https://eros.usgs.gov/lcmap/apps/data-downloads) was used to estimate changes in land cover. LCMAP is a collection of raster maps produced by the USGS, available annually from 1985 to 2021, covering the contiguous United States. The land cover change study covered the calendar years 2003 to 2021 to fully align with the water years 2004 to 2021, matching the time period used in other studies in the MS thesis. This data was used to analyze the land cover change and transformation within the Great Salt Lake basins to help understand and estimate the impact of land cover change on the water balance in the basin.