Impacts of Remotely Sensed Land Use Data on Watershed Hydrologic Change Assessment

Authors

Gi-Choul Ahn, Snohomish County Public Works – Surface Water Management DivisionFollow
Steven I. Gordon, Department of City and Regional Planning, The Ohio State UniversityFollow
Carolyn J. Merry, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, The Ohio State UniversityFollow

Corresponding Author

Steven I. Gordon

Abstract

Urbanization affects the stream system of a watershed. Increased urbanization alters the land cover and surface characteristics, the stream channel characteristics, and pollutant load of a stream system by increasing the amount of impervious surface. Once rural, forest, or wetland areas are changed to streets, highways, parking lots, sidewalks, and building rooftops. This results in large volumes of runoff being generated for an intense storm over a relatively short time period. As a result, sensitive ecosystems are likely to be damaged by increased urbanization.

Projecting the impact of land use changes on a watershed scale often requires the use of remote sensing data to derive the required inputs on land cover and the related amount of impervious surface. Such forecasts are then used to devise alternative land use and stormwater control policies. One critical question that arises then is the impact of land use/land cover (LULC) mapping error on the resulting hydrologic model projections. In this research, we developed a methodology to assess those impacts. The Hydrologic Engineering Center-Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) model was used to estimate the peak hydrograph for a baseline land use condition and then used to estimate the impact of LULC mapping accuracy levels on those forecasts. The Big Darby Creek Watershed located near Columbus, Ohio, which is experiencing increased urbanization, was selected to map LULC, calibrate a hydrologic model, and assess the hydrologic change due to LULC mapping error. The resulting analysis showed that modest changes in land cover classification did not produce significant impacts on the hydrologic modeling results in rural basins. However, the hydrologic changes are noticeable in urbanizing watersheds. The framework developed in this paper can be used for future modeling efforts to understand the hydrological impact of LULC change in a watershed at a large scale.

Recommended Citation

Ahn, Gi-Choul; Gordon, Steven I.; and Merry, Carolyn J. (2014) "Impacts of Remotely Sensed Land Use Data on Watershed Hydrologic Change Assessment," International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research: Vol. 1: No. 1, Article 9.
Available at: https://dc.uwm.edu/ijger/vol1/iss1/9