Land Cover 
I 
Land cover is the product of past land uses on the 
backdrop of the biophysical setting. A map of land 
cover is essentially a picture of the dominant vegeta¬ 
tive, water, and urban cover in an area. Figure 3.4 
illustrates the land cover of the Tensas River Basin. 
This land cover map was jointly prepared by the 
USFWS, the USGS Biological Research Division 
(formerly known as the National Biological Service) 
and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. They 
used Landsat Thematic Mapper 30-meter satellite 
imagery to derive the 17 classes displayed in the map. 
Although individual pixels are far too small to be 
rendered accurately here, the visual impression of 
broad-scale watershed patterns is readily apparent. 
This Land Cover map can be used for many types of 
landscape analyses and assessments. For our 
assessment of the land cover we started with only 
three classes: forest, human use, and water. Later on 
in this chapter we explain in much more detail 
how these were derived. 
The two most dominant land cover types in the 
Tensas River Basin are forest and human use, which 
presently cover about 22% and 77% of the area, 
respectively. Some of the subwatersheds are prima¬ 
rily forested and approach 60% forest cover. Some 
subwatersheds have less than 5% forest cover. 
Where forests have been removed, agriculture and 
urban land covers become more dominant. The 
median amount of urban land cover per watershed is 
about 2%. Agriculture is an extremely important land 
use in the region; four subwatersheds have more than 
60% of agriculture land cover. 
Landcover 
Cypress/Willow 
Wet Hardwoods 
Hardwoods 
Edge Forest 
Other Forest 
Scrub/Shrub 
Conservation Reserve 
Grass 
Lakes 
Urban 
Rice 
Soybean 
Cotton 
Milo 
Sugar Cane 
Com 
Other Crops 
Figure 3.4 
Land Cover in the Tensas River Basin. Source: USFWS, BRD, and the 
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Landsat TM 30 -meter satellite imagery, 
