Land Cover, Climate, and Geological conditions summarized within Maryland DNR Biological Stream Survery (MBSS) Catchments

This dataset consists of several measures of landscape characteristics, each of which is summarized from raster data within spatial polygons. These spatial polygons represent the land area upstream of sampled stream reaches. These stream reaches were sampled by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for the Maryland Biological Stream Survey program during survey rounds one, two, and four. Landscape characteristics summarized here are either represented by continuous or discrete raster layers which are summarized as the average value of a given characteristic (continuous data) or the area occupied by each class (discrete data). The continuous datasets summarized included percentage of area occupied by tree canopy (for the years 2011 and 2016) and urban land cover (for the years 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016); the percentage of the surficial geology made up of various chemical constituents (including aluminum oxide, calcium oxide, ferric oxide, potassium oxide, magnesium oxide, sodium oxide, nitrogen, phosphorus pentoxide, silicon dioxide, and sulfur); surficial geology physical characteristics (including hydraulic conductivity and uniaxial compressive strength); top soil characteristics (percentage of layer made up of clay, sand, and silt as well as soil K-factor/soil erodibility); topographic conditions (including elevation and topographic wetness index); annual and monthly climate conditions for the years 1994-1997,1999-2004, and 2013-2018 (average air temperature and total precipitation). The discrete datasets summarized included land cover classifications for the years 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2016; land cover change index values for the period between 2001 and 2016.