HR: 0800h
AN: B11A-0126    [Abstracts]
TI: Evaluation Of Environmental Influences Of Urbanization Using Remote Sensing And Climate Observations
AU: * Xian, G
EM: xian@usgs.gov
AF: SAIC USGS EROS Data Center, 47914 252nd Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57198 United States
AU: Crane, M
EM: mpcrane@usgs.gov
AF: USGS EROS Data Center, 47198 252nd Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57198 United States
AB: Urban development has experienced rapid growth in the Tampa Bay area of west-central Florida over the last century. This expansion trend is transforming the landscape from natural cover types to increasingly impervious urban land. Remote sensing data has been used to assess urban land cover and its thermal characteristics by mapping impervious surfaces at a sub-pixel resolution. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) data were used to estimate urban imperviousness variation from 1991 to 2002 in the Tampa Bay watershed, Florida. The urban/rural boundary and urban development density are defined through the selection of imperviousness threshold values. The increasingly important influence that urbanization and its attendant imperviousness exert on the environmental health of the region have been investigated by analyzing radiant surface temperatures (Ts) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) using ETM+ satellite data. Analysis of impervious surface and Ts shows significant difference in Ts values associated with different percentages of impervious coverage. An inverse relationship has been found to exist between imperviousness and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for several urban areas. The relationship of imperviousness, Ts and NDVI has been evaluated, as has the urban heat island (UHI) effect on local climate change. Our results show that urban land use change has a profound impact on both seasonal-averaged and minimum surface temperature changes within the spatial scale of the watershed.
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical processes (4805)
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting