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Beyond Impervious: Urban Land-Cover Pattern Variation and Implications for Watershed Management

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Abstract

Impervious surfaces degrade urban water quality, but their over-coverage has not explained the persistent water quality variation observed among catchments with similar rates of imperviousness. Land-cover patterns likely explain much of this variation, although little is known about how they vary among watersheds. Our goal was to analyze a series of urban catchments within a range of impervious cover to evaluate how land-cover varies among them. We then highlight examples from the literature to explore the potential effects of land-cover pattern variability for urban watershed management. High-resolution (1 m2) land-cover data were used to quantify 23 land-cover pattern and stormwater infrastructure metrics within 32 catchments across the Triangle Region of North Carolina. These metrics were used to analyze variability in land-cover patterns among the study catchments. We used hierarchical clustering to organize the catchments into four groups, each with a distinct landscape pattern. Among these groups, the connectivity of combined land-cover patches accounted for 40 %, and the size and shape of lawns and buildings accounted for 20 %, of the overall variation in land-cover patterns among catchments. Storm water infrastructure metrics accounted for 8 % of the remaining variation. Our analysis demonstrates that land-cover patterns do vary among urban catchments, and that trees and grass (lawns) are divergent cover types in urban systems. The complex interactions among land-covers have several direct implications for the ongoing management of urban watersheds.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Science Foundation for their support of this research through the Triangle, NC, Urban Long Term Research Area—exploratory award (BCS-0948229). We thank Gary Blank, Kayleigh Somers, Heather Cheshire, Emily Bernhardt, Kevin Bigsby, and Sarah Bruce for their various contributions to this project. The cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill/Carrboro helped immensely through the sharing of spatial data and resources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 8008, 2820 Faucette Blvd, 4120 Jordan Hall, Raleigh, NC, 27607, USA

    Scott M. Beck, Melissa R. McHale & George R. Hess

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  1. Scott M. Beck
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  2. Melissa R. McHale
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  3. George R. Hess
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Correspondence to Scott M. Beck.

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Beck, S.M., McHale, M.R. & Hess, G.R. Beyond Impervious: Urban Land-Cover Pattern Variation and Implications for Watershed Management. Environmental Management 58, 15–30 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0700-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0700-8

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