This 30-meter resolution raster data set of land cover for the conterminous United States ("NLCDep0306") was designed to describe conditions representative of the year 2000 and is the result of overlaying enhanced 1992 National Land Cover Data with 1990 and 2000 population data at the block group geographic level. Any area (excluding water, developed land, or wetlands) with population density of less than 1,000 people per square mile in 1990 and at least 1,000 people per square mile in 2000 was reclassified as "newly urbanized" land in the derivative product. Areas of water, developed land, or wetlands existing in the original national land-cover data set were preserved.

This data set supersedes the one called "Enhanced National Land Cover Data 1992 revised with 2000 population data to indicate urban development between 1992 and 2000" ("NLCDep0905") dated September 2005. NLCDep0905 coded any area having 2000 population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile as being recently urbanized and did not consider that the area could already have been urbanized in 1990. The approach used in developing NLCDep0905 was determined to have misclassified lands that already were urban in 1990 as newly urbanized and therefore overrepresented new urban land.