U.S. Census data reveal high‐density housing “hidden” under forested land cover along lake shorelines

Abstract Exclusive dependence on remotely sensed data for land cover analysis limits identification of the impact of human settlement on environmental conditions. We combined U.S. National Land Cover Database (NLCD) imagery with fine‐scale, block‐level housing data from the decennial U.S. Census to provide a nuanced spatial representation at the county scale of housing “hidden” under forested land cover at various distances from freshwater lakes in the upper Midwest and northeastern New England. Along lake shorelines, 36% of the land area classified as being in forested land cover by the NLCD had dense concentrations of housing units (>40 homes km −2 ) and an additional 29% had medium‐density housing (>8–40 homes km −2 ). Moreover, the percentage of forested land pixels with high‐density housing declined sharply at increasing distances from lakes. Our demographically enhanced method of quantifying the intersection of forested land cover and human populations proximate to lakes should facilitate analysis of the reciprocal impacts of human settlement on lakes and lakes on the adjacent human population in the United States.