Little Tennessee River Riparian Buffer change GIS data: 1998 - 2015

Using high resolution orthoimagery, riparian conditions between 1998 and 2015 were mapped and quantified in the rural upper Little Tennessee River basin in Macon County, North Carolina. Low elevation valley streams in residential areas were targeted, excluding stream segments on U.S. Forest Service (USFS) lands. Impoundments and streams within existing urban centers were also excluded from GIS analysis. Tributary streams were included if they were National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) mapped streams and if they met the study criteria, i.e. low-elevation residential valley streams outside existing urban areas and USFS lands. Due to the size of the watershed and time constraints, only the mainstem Little Tennessee and a portion of its tributary streams could be mapped. A total of 658 km (including both banks) of streams in the study area were mapped and classified. All classifications were made by one interpreter between June 2018 and August 2018. The GIS files are are in .zip archives labeled by imagery year (1998 and 2015). The 1998 GIS files are mislabeled '1999' which was corrected during analysis using R. The code used for analysis is provided in R markdown files.