Land-cover Change and Environmental Impact Analysis in the Greater Mankato Area of Minnesota Using Remote Sensing and GIS modeling

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Land-cover Change and Environmental Impact
Analysis in the Greater Mankato Area of Minnesota
Using Remote Sensing and GIS modeling

• Paper by F. Yuan. 2008. International Journal of
  Remote Sensing, Volume 29 p1169 1184.

Presented by Ryan Miller Spanish, Geog
370 24/02/2008
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Problem

• Problem Land-use and land-cover changes have
  great effects on the environmental and
  socio-economic sustainability of communities.
  When one type of use replaces another, the
  effects tend to be superimposed and cumulative.
• Hypothesis Changes in percent impervious
  surface, cropland and grassland affect the local
  environment with regards to air and water quality.

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Methods

• Site Mankato, MN
• ArcGIS-CITYgreen
• QuickBird
• Determined the land cover type based on aerial
  photography from 1971 and from 2003
• Impervious Surface, Forest, Cropland/Grass,
  Water -textural and spectral variation issues
  addressed
• Determined air quality, carbon storage and
  sequestration, storm water runoff, and
  water-quality changes
• Ozone, Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, Carbon
  Monoxide, particulate matter lt10 µm

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Results

• Extent of urban development nearly doubled from
  1971-2003
• 18.3? 32.6
• Urban sprawl has increased average surface runoff
  volume by 5.14mm
• Urban development has not impacted the overall
  air quality of the area
• Author attributes the unchanged levels in annual
  air-pollution removal rate and carbon
  storage/sequestration to the increase of urban
  forest in this site over the 32-year span.

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Figures
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Conclusions

• Accurate land use information can be obtained
  from high resolute remote-sensing data and
  interpreted with GIS tools in order to estimate
  present changes in environmental effects from
  land use and land cover changes.
• Urban sprawl increases total runoff volumes.
• Criticisms
• Scale of the assessment
• Focus on municipal boundaries rather than
  Watershed boundaries
• Opportunities
• Lack of explored opportunities for land use
  regulation