Classification and Prediction of Impervious Surfaces in the Brush Creek Watershed, Missouri

Date of Graduation

Fall 2006

Degree

Master of Science in Geospatial Sciences

Department

Geography, Geology, and Planning

Committee Chair

L. Monika Moskal

Abstract

The Brush Creek Watershed in Missouri is experiencing rapid growth which in turn can lead to an exponential increase in the amount of impervious land cover. Impervious land cover can be defined as any artificial surface structure that does not allow water to infiltrate into the ground (Schuler and kastdalen, 2005). Large extents of impervious land cover can result in increased storm water runoff, less flow in streams during drought time conditions, and higher max flow during floods (Kauffman and rant, 2000). This project uses a high resolution feature extraction process to determine the current amount of impervious land over, and then extrapolates this into the future using future zoning plans to derive with the predicted future amount of impervious land cover. Geostatistical spatial autocorrelation techniques are also employed to quantify the spatial distribution of the impervious land cover across the watershed. With these figures combined, the distribution and amount of impervious land cover in the future will be provided to give planners, conservationists, and citizens a better understanding of what the future will hold.

Keywords

spatial autocorrelation, impervious land cover, classification, urban sprawl, feature extraction

Subject Categories

Hydrology | Water Resource Management

Copyright

© Robert Jonathan Woosley

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Dissertation/Thesis

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