A Little Spare Change: Monitoring land-cover change by satellite

Introduction

Can city utility services use remote satellite data, processed with geographic information systems (GIS), to help track urban development? In particular, which areas of the city of Raleigh exhibit evidence of possible change in land cover during a period of high growth?

The city of Raleigh, North Carolina, is interested in meeting and maintaining federal standards of water quality in the local waterways. As in many other municipalities, programs to reduce water pollution are funded through a utilities fee levied on city landowners based on the area of impervious surfaces on properties within the city. The city Public Works Department is responsible for maintaining accurate records of these surfaces, both for fair collection of these fees and for appropriate planning of projects to manage storm water runoff. This is a considerable task for the 45th-largest and eighth-fastest growing city in the US (City Data), but perhaps the use of high-resolution satellite imagery can make the process both faster and less expensive.

Location

Raleigh, North Carolina

Time to complete the lab

One and one-half hours

Prerequisites

This lab is intended for upper-class undergraduates who have a familiarity with the manipulation and presentation of raster data in ArcMap.

Data used in this lab

IKONOS satellite imagery (www.geoeyefoundation.org)

Geographic coordinate system: GCS_North_American_1983

Datum: D_WGS_1984

Projection: Universal Transverse Mercator Zone 17N