Knauss legislative fellowships in Congress help build careers — and they're fun and educational. See our video and fact sheet for details.
The Maryland Sea Grant bookstore is closed from December 10 to January 3.
Research Publications: UM-SG-RS-2010-13
Title:
Synergistic use of Landsat Multispectral Scanner with GIRAS land-cover data to retrieve impervious surface area for the Potomac River Basin in 1975.
Year:
2010Authors:
Elmore, AJ; Guinn, SMSource:
Remote Sensing of Environment 114 ( 10 ) : 2384 - 2391DOI:
10.1016/j.rse.2010.05.004Abstract:
For many studies of urbanization, particularly those covering broad spatial extents and thus requiring the perspective afforded by satellite remote sensing, the longest time series of impervious surface area (ISA) initiate with the availability of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data in the mid 1980s. Earlier generation remote sensing data, such as Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) do not generally lead to robust representations of impervious surface area due to poor spectral differentiation between impervious and non-impervious surfaces lacking vegetation. In the 1970s, however, the USGS completed a comprehensive mapping of land cover based on aerial photography called the Geographic Information Retrieval and Analysis System (GIRAS). In this paper we describe a methodology for retrieving ISA estimates through the fusion of GIRAS land cover with historic and contemporary remote sensing data, resulting in a data set that is temporally comparable to more modern data sets (e.g. the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) ISA product). We calculate correlation coefficients between our data set and digitized aerial photography at 4 spatial resolutions, exhibiting a maximum correlation of 0.65 at 120-m and 240-rn pixel sizes. Our highest resolution product (30-m) exhibited 94% accuracy and a kappa coefficient of 36% in rural areas, and 90.7% accuracy and a kappa coefficient of 59.6% in suburban areas. Further, we show that trends in urban area through time derived from these data exhibit accelerating rates of development throughout the Potomac River basin 1975-2001, including increased development in riparian buffer zones and on steeper topography. These results are applicable wherever low-resolution vector-based data sets of urban area are available or could be generated for the pre-Landsat TM era.
Related Research Project(s) Funded by Maryland Sea Grant:
Maryland Sea Grant Topic(s):
'Related Research Project(s)' link to details about research projects funded by Maryland Sea Grant that led to this publication. These details may include other impacts and accomplishments resulting from the research.
'Maryland Sea Grant Topic(s)' links to related pages on the Maryland Sea Grant website.
Program Announcements
News and Blogs
Featured Fellow
Leone Yisrael is a cephalopod-loving scuba diver, cook, and loves to try new activities. She conducts genetic analysis and fieldwork at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center through the Coastal Disease Ecology Lab.
Featured Research Project
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food webs
Mysids are important mesozooplankton prey for many species of fish in Chesapeake Bay and are an important link in transferring energy from lower to upper trophic levels. Mysids also serve as biological vectors for benthic-pelagic coupling due to their diel vertical migration and omnivorous prey-switching behavior, which makes mysids important regulators of food web architecture. Despite their central role in coastal food webs, surprisingly little is known about mysid ecology and dynamics in Chesapeake Bay.
