IITF RMAP 01 English

Title: Urban and rural land use in Puerto Rico

Type: Research Map (RMAP)

Year: 2008

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2737/IITF-RMAP-1 [Opens in New Window]

Description: We have developed three land use regions for Puerto Rico: Urban, Suburban, and Rural (Gould et al. 2008; Martinuzzi et al. 2007). These three regions can also be considered urban, densely-populated rural, and sparsely-populated rural or as urban and wildland with a wildland-urban interface. The suburban use is the most dynamic in terms of population growth and land cover change. Developed surfaces refer to built-up and non-vegetated areas that result from human activity. These areas were identified using remote sensing techniques to analyze a mosaic of Landsat ETM+ satellite images from the years 2000 to 2003.Urban use refers to those places in the landscape where the presence of developed/built-up areas per km2 is more than 20 percent. Rural use refers to those places in the landscape where the presence of developed/built-up areas is less than 20 percent. The rural areas were subdivided into two classes, based on the U.S. Census 2000 approach for the identification of densely and sparsely populated territories: densely-populated rural or suburbanwith core census block groups or blocks that have a population density of at least 1,000 people per mi2 plus surrounding census blocks that have an overall density of at least 500 people per mi2, and sparsely-populated rural or simply rural for the rest.

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Suggested Citation: Martinuzzi, Sebastian; Gould, William A.; Ramos Gonzalez, Olga M.; Quinones, Maya; Jimenez, Michael E. 2008. Urban and rural land use in Puerto Rico. Scale 1: 260 000. Res. Map IITF-RMAP-01. Rio Piedras, PR: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry.