LCRC LAND USE Basin
Priorities (unranked)
Written by Austin Troy, University of Vermont
To be presented by: Brian Voigt, University of Vermont
With comments from: Mary Watzin, Alexey Voinov, Jon
Erickson, Morgan Grove and Jarlath O’Neil Dunne
Quantifying human impacts on
fresh water systems
- Research
the effects of urban development
and agricultural practices on:
- Phosphorous,
nitrogen and sediment loadings
- Aquatic
instream ecological indicators (e.g. macroinvertebrates and fish)
- Stream
geomorphology
- Water
clarity and turbidity
- Riparian
zones
- Research
how these impacts are conditioned by the spatial pattern of land use and
the timing of land use change
- Simulate
impacts under probable future land use scenarios (e.g. full buildout under
allowable zoning)
- Research
the change in the above impacts when converting agricultural lands to
urban uses
- Research
the difference in the above impacts for different types of agriculture
(e.g. row crop, hay, pasture) and for different agricultural BMPs
- Research
the factors that mediate these relationships, such as riparian buffers,
slope, soils and geology.
GIS Land Use Data Development
and Analysis
- Develop
accurate and current GIS land use map at 1:5000 scale with high
categorical precision; could be built through manual digitizing or
automated remote sensing classification; focus such mapping on those
classes that are most likely to contribute to non-point source pollutants;
devote considerable resources to accuracy assessment of this layer; also
develop protocol for updating
- Need
updates to E911 housing GIS point data, with more attributes about the
structures, including number of units, year built, etc. ; also develop
protocol for updating
- Need
better data on point source polluters, including accurate level of output
- Complete
GIS parcels outside of Chittenden County and develop protocol for
maintaining and updating
- Use
high resolution imagery to attribute parcels with information about the
amount of tree, grass and impervious cover at that level; this can help
identify areas where urban greening would contribute significantly to
non-point source reductions in runoff pollutants.
- Use
high resolution imagery to map out tree and grass cover in public rights
of way (e.g. street vegetation), in public lands and in riparian areas along
agricultural fields
- Need
GIS layer showing geomorphic classes of segments of major streams
- Statistically
analyze the relationship between socio-economic factors and parcel level
management of vegetation, including application of lawn and garden products
and types of plantings
- Research
the difference in the above impacts for different housing market segments:
settlement patterns and variations in land management among different
social groups.
- Use
existing layers to create maps prioritizing land parcels for conservation
based on their contribution to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem services
- Use
high resolution LIDAR altimetry data to improve the delineation of urban
and suburban watersheds
- Create
an environmentally meaningful map of urban sprawl showing environmental
efficiency of human occupation based on per capita impacts (derived from
land use-water quality relationships).
- Use
this map to help planners target areas for growth—that is find areas where
impacts are already high relative to the number of people served and hence
additional population will marginally contribute less to impacts than
elsewhere.
- Create
an ArcSDE geodatabase to house and distribute basinwide GIS layers,
allowing for users at multiple institutions to contribute and edit data.
Land Use History
- Need
data on land use history for the Basin
- Develop
a protocol for defining what is considered land use change
- Scan
and orthorectify more old air photos
- Archive
and make accessible
- Digitize
land use from those photos
- Conduct
more automated classification of satellite imagery to get time series of
land use change of the last three decades
- Collaborate
with NRCS, UVM SAL, UVM map library and UVM VT landscape change project
to inventory data and make available.
- Analyzing
land use change over time at a regional scale:
- On
what type of land has change occurred?
- How
is this changing?
- What
does this say about where future land use change might occur?
- How
does this change correlate with historical water monitoring data?
Land use growth simulation
- Conduct
spatially explicit urban growth simulation to determine where future
growth is likely to occur, using dynamic economic modeling based on
historical land use change data and empirically derived statistical
relationships.
- Analyze
hypothetical scenarios to determine how predicted future land use will
change under different policies.
- Construction
of new highways or utility infrastructure
- Imposition
of growth boundaries or urban service boundaries
- Changes
to zoning
- Significant
increase in gas tax
- Changes
to Act 250 (e.g. criteria, triggering mechanisms)
- Changes
to Current Use Taxation
- Changes
to Regional Planning Commission powers
- Based
on the land use-water quality relationships discussed above, quantify
predicted land use patterns and their impacts on water quality under the
specified urban simulation scenarios
- Create
dynamic geographic outputs and interfaces that allow stakeholders to
visualize and comment upon the outcomes and the scenarios
Quantifying the ecosystem
services of fresh water systems
- Better
non-market valuation of the water-related ecosystem services provided by
different natural land covers, including:
- Disturbance
prevention
- Freshwater
regulation
- Freshwater
supply
- Waste/nutrient
assimilation
- Biodiveristy
protection
- Recreation
- Amenity
values
- How do
differences in the characteristics of those land covers affect the estimated
non-market value, based on characteristics like:
- Relative
scarcity of the land cover (e.g. is marginal ES value of a given wetland
lesser where wetlands are plentiful than where that wetland is the only
one around?)
- Spatial
arrangement and context of the land cover (e.g. might a wetland provide a
different level of a given ES in a downstream urbanized area than at the
top of a forested watershed)
- Structural
characteristics within a given land cover class (e.g. young forest vs. old
growth)
Economic Benefit and Tradeoff
Studies
·
Study the marginal human-oriented benefits from
improvements to water quality and other aquatic ecological metrics in the Lake
and in contributing rivers
o Savings
for water filtration/ treatment systems
o Non-market
recreation values
o Market-based
tourism income
o Aesthetic
and amenity values (analysis of the impacts of environmental quality on
property values)
o These
can be done with benefits transfer methodologies, but locally-based empirical
assessment should be targeted
o Methods:
avoided cost, replacement cost, hedonic analysis, contingent valuation, travel
cost.
·
Study the costs of making marginal improvements.
o Point
sources: treatment plants, pollution control devices for industrial facilities,
etc
o Non-point
sources: education programs for homeowners, feasibility of local homeowner
pollution ordinances, design based solutions for stormwater (e.g. constructed
wetlands), laws to change composition of household products.
·
Look at sensitivity of cost-benefit ratios to changes
in
o Assumptions
about the impacts of land use on ecosystem services
o Assumptions
about population and population growth
o Interest
rates
o Cost
of energy (affects cost of water treatment)
o Consumer
preferences