Derived data from Johnson, Ducey, Cook and Cottingham, "US Census data reveal high-density housing 'hidden' under forested land cover along lake shorelines", In press at Ecosphere, 6 January 2026

We combined U.S. National Land Cover Database (NLCD) imagery with fine-scale housing data from the decennial U.S. Census to provide a nuanced spatial representation of housing “hidden” under forest cover at various distances from freshwater lakes in the upper Midwest and New England. This dataset provides county-level summaries of the percent of pixels classified as forest by the NLCD that have high (>40 homes km^-2), medium (8 to 40 homes km^-2), or low (0 to 8 homes km^-2) housing density at various distances from lakes that are >100 acres in size. The data come from five selected counties in the Great Lakes region (three in Michigan, two in Wisconsin) and five counties in northeastern New England (two in Maine and three in New Hampshire). See Johnson et al. (in press) for details.