Land Use Changes in The Mississippi River Basin Floodplains: 1941 to 2000 (version 1)

This work has been published in the Nature Scientific Data. Suggested citation:
Rajib et al. The changing face of floodplains in the Mississippi River Basin detected by a 60-year land use change dataset. Nature Scientific Data 8, 271 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01048-w

Here, we present the first-available dataset that quantifies land use change along the floodplains of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) covering 60 years (1941-2000) at 250-m resolution. The MRB is the fourth largest river basin in the world (3.3 million sq km) comprising 41% of the United States and draining into the Gulf of Mexico, an area with an annually expanding and contracting hypoxic zone resulting from basin-wide over-enrichment of nutrients. The basin represents one of the most engineered systems in the world, and includes complex web of dams, levees, floodplains, and dikes. This new dataset reveals the heterogenous spatial extent of land use transformations in MRB floodplains. The domination transition of floodplains has been from natural ecosystems (e.g. wetlands or forests) to agricultural use. A steady increase in developed land use within the MRB floodplains was also evident.

To maximize the reuse of this dataset, our contributions also include four unique products:
(i) a Google Earth Engine interactive map visualization interface: https://gishub.org/mrb-floodplain
(ii) a Google-based Python code that runs in any internet browser: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1vmIaUCkL66CoTv4rNRIWpJXYXp4TlAKd?usp=sharing
(iii) an online tutorial with visualizations facilitating classroom application of the code: https://serc.carleton.edu/hydromodules/steps/241489.html
(iv) an instructional video showing how to run the code and partially reproduce the floodplain land use change dataset: https://youtu.be/wH0gif_y15A