Funded by: Army Corps of Engineers
Project Manager: Rod Denning
Project Assistant: Jean Conzelmann

The Annis Water Resources Institute worked on a collaborative Study with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Land use and cover information was updated for the Northern Lake Michigan shoreline communities of Antrim, Emmet, and Charlevoix counties. The update was part of the Army Corps Lake Michigan Potential Damages Study that was started in 1996. The project evaluated economic impacts of the lake level fluctuations along lakes Michigan, Erie, and Ontario.

AWRI used digital ortho-photography provided by the Corps to create the new land use and cover geographic information system (GIS) data layer. Researchers compared the new land use and cover statistics with the older information to get an idea of how development has impacted these northern communities. AWRI created a color map atlas as a way to display and summarize this new information.