Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
implications such as watershed characterization, urbanization prediction, forest
fragmentation, and characterization of large interior forest blocks in quantitative
and spatial terms.
Over the 2001-2005 quadrennium, Kentucky experienced land cover class
changes comprising about 1% of its total area - or over 98,100 ha. Such change
represented for example a net loss of the forest cover class, and a net gain of urban
development plus barren land cover classes of almost 62,000 ha and 11,600 ha, or
about 42 and 8 ha/day, respectively. Inter-conversion of areas under different types
of developed land is also evident (Table
8.1
). Net forest loss estimates matched with
similar gains in nonforested areas (barren, grassland/ herbaceous and scrub/shrub).
Inspection of these changes indicates that some of it occurred as a result of surface
mining activities which have its own environmental resource management implica-
tions. In contrast, urban development had a net gain rate of over 4 ha/day; the net
loss rate for wetlands (woody and herbaceous) and agricultural land (hay/pasture
and cultivated crops) was 1 and 2.5 ha/day, respectively, with small contributions
from forested lands to urban areas (Zourarakis
2009
).
Table 8.1
Land cover class change in Kentucky, 2001-2005
Land cover class (Class number)
(Anderson level II)
Area lost
(ha)
Area gained
(ha)
Balance
(ha)
Daily change
(ha/day)
Open water (11)
159
643
484
0.3
Developed open space (21)
2, 752
2, 306
−
446
−
0.3
Developed low intensity (22)
904
4, 852
3, 948
2.7
Developed medium intensity (23)
456
2, 377
1, 921
1.3
Developed high intensity (24)
79
846
767
0.5
Barren (31)
9, 455
14, 831
5, 377
3.7
Deciduous forest (41)
57, 471
3
−
57, 468
−
39.4
Evergreen forest (42)
2, 825
4
−
2, 821
−
1.9
Mixed forest (43)
1, 510
0
−
1, 510
−
1.0
Scrub/shrub (52)
1, 400
36, 733
35, 333
24.2
Grassland/herbaceous (71)
12, 728
35, 058
22, 330
15.3
−
−
Pasture/hay (81)
4, 008
90
3, 917
2.7
Cultivated crops (82)
2, 813
170
−
2, 643
−
1.8
Woody wetlands (90)
1, 222
224
−
998
−
0.7
Emergent herbaceous wetlands (95)
356
0
−
356
−
0.2
Total
98, 138
98, 138
0
0
With these broad landscape scale changes identified in the state of Kentucky as
a backdrop, this chapter's next four sections will provide environmental resource
management examples specifically related to imperviousness analyses and its tem-
poral changes with a focus on several parts of Kentucky's landscapes. The general
approach is to extract estimates for total impervious area both as absolute and
relative magnitudes, based on the NLCD01, subpixel
imperviousness dataset
