Estuarine vegetated wetland change scenarios for estuaries in the conterminous United States, 1996–2019

This data release contains land cover-derived statistics regarding estuarine vegetated wetland area change within estuary drainage areas along the conterminous U.S. This dataset includes net change in estuarine vegetated wetland area based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coastal Change Assessment Program (C-CAP) 1996 and 2016 land cover data. Net change was assessed between estuarine vegetated wetlands (i.e., estuarine marshes, mangroves, non-mangrove estuarine woody wetlands, and salt pannes, depending on vegetation coverage and type) and the following other landcover classes: 1) water; 2) unconsolidated shore; 3) freshwater woody wetlands; 4) freshwater marsh; 5) upland; and 6) agriculture. An estuarine vegetated wetland change scenario was assigned to each region depending on different combinations of positive and negative net change in some of these classes which describes how land building, transgression, or tidal restoration compare to estuarine vegetated wetland loss. This dataset also includes relative statistics of change compared to estuarine vegetated wetland and estuary area.