Poster Abstract Details

Author(s):
Shufen Pan, Larry Prince, Guiying Li and Hanqin Tian

Affiliation:
Auburn University

Presentation Type:
Poster

Topic Area:
Spatial/scale aspects of land-use change

Abstract Text:
The coastal watersheds in the Gulf of Mexico are being encroached by the expansion of the surrounding cities. Information on spatial and temporal patterns of land use and land cover is essential for assessing how environmental changes in coastal zone have affected or will affect ecosystem services in this area. Remotely sensed data with their advantages in spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions have demonstrated their power in providing information of physical characteristics of land surface and have been widely used for mapping and monitoring of land surface biophysical features. The objective of this study is to provide spatially-explicit information on LULC changes over time and develop an integrated geographical information system in support of coastal watershed study in the Gulf of Mexico. To characterize coastal landscape changes, we have used various data sources including Landsat MSS amd TM images, aerial photographs, wetland inventory datasets and land cover datasets from both NLCD and Baldwin County. We used a procedure of unsupervised classification for developing the LULC maps, then compared and analyzed LULC maps by using post-classification method. To assess the classification accuracy, overall accuracy, producer’s accuracy, user’s accuracy, and kappa coefficient were calculated. Results show significant changes in land cover in the past decades including decreases in forest, cropland and wetland, and an increase in impervious surface. Our spatial data also indicate large difference in spatial and temporal pattern of landscapes among coastal watersheds due to different development stages. These datasets resulted from this study have provided essential data for evaluating the causes and consequences of land use and land cover changes in the coastal zone.