Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Making Water Resource Decisions More "Informationally" Efficient: Development Of A Geospatial Water Rights Decision Support System For Kittitas County, Washington, Michael Pease, Jeremy Murray

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

In semi-arid river basins like the Yakima River Basin in central Washington State, United States of America, water demand can exceed available supply on an annual basis. More informed decisions about water supply and current allocation have the potential to improve water management. This research created a geospatial water rights database for the Yakima River Basin. The creation of a publicly available decision support system mapping water rights can provide water managers another tool to help achieve this goal. This paper describes the creation of the Decision Support System. In addition it looks at the current utility of the system, …

Freshwater Springs Preservation In Jejudo: Reinterpretation Of Springs As An Ethnological And Environmental Resource, Chang-Yu Hong

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

On Jeju Island, there are many freshwater springs because it is a volcanic island with abundant precipitation and rainwater. While springs were once plentiful in the island, due to depletion and urbanization pressures, many of the traditional wood and rock structures and spaces surrounding springs have become severely deteriorated. Until the 1970s springs served as vital community resources for water provisioning for drinking and household use, agriculture and livestock. However, after most springs fell into disuse, hydraulic engineers have maintained Jeju’s springs with a concern for springs with strong flow and good water quality but disregarding human activities such as …

Uncovering The Influence Of Household Sociodemographic And Behavioral Characteristics On Summer Water Consumption In The Portland Metropolitan Area, Chang-Yu Hong, Heejun Chang

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

As urban areas continue to expand, sustainable urban water resource management has become an important issue in green and sustainable city planning. Using single-family residential (SFR) household survey, we identified the determinants of household summer daily water consumption from 2000 to 2005 in Portland, Oregon. The multiple regression results show that approximately 41% of variations in SFR water consumption is explained by average building size, household attitude to water conservation, community engagement of household, and presence of native plants in the garden. The multi-level modeling results show that household attitude to water conservation is an important predictor of SFR water …

Assessing The Impacts Of Climate Change, Urbanization, And Filter Strips On Water Quality Using Swat, Mike Psaris, Heejun Chang

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

Precipitation changes and urban growth are two factors altering the state of water quality. Changes in precipitation will alter the amount and timing of flows, and the corresponding sediment and nutrient dynamics. Meanwhile, densification associated with urban growth will create more impervious surfaces which will alter sediment and nutrient loadings. Land and water managers rely on models to develop possible future scenarios and devise management responses to these projected changes. We use the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to assess potential changes in stream flow, sediment, and nutrient loads in two urbanizing watersheds in Northwest Oregon, USA. We evaluate …

Measuring Spatial Health Disparity Using A Network-Based Accessibility Index Method In A Gis Environment: A Case Study Of Hillsborough County, Florida, Huairen Ye, Hyun Kim

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

In recent decades, the health care delivery system in the United States has been greatly transformed and more widely examined. Even with one of the most developed health care systems in the world, the United States still experiences great spatial disparity in health care access. Increasing diversity of class, culture, and ethnicity also has a significant impact on health disparity. The goal of this paper is to address the spatial disparity of health care access using a network-based health accessibility index method (NHAIM) in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. Ensuring a desired level of accessibility for patients is the …

Sensitivity Of Urban Water Consumption To Weather And Climate Variability At Multiple Temporal Scales: The Case Of Portland, Oregon, Heejun Chang, Sarah Praskievicz, Hossein Parandvash

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

The sensitivity of municipal water consumption to climate and weather variability is investigated for Portland’s water provider service area between 1960 and 2013. The relationship between detrended seasonal urban water use (the difference between total water use and base use) and weather and climate variables (precipitation, maximum temperature) is examined at daily, monthly, and seasonal scales using stepwise multiple regression and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models. At a seasonal and a monthly timescales, interannual variation in maximum temperature is the most important predictor of seasonal water consumption per capita, explaining up to 48% of the variation in seasonal monthly …

Using Fine Resolution Orthoimagery And Spatial Interpolation To Rapidly Map Turf Grass In Suburban Massachusetts, Daniel S.M. Runfola, Thomas Hamill, Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr., John Rogan, Nick Giner, Albert Decatur, Samuel Ratick

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

This paper explores the use of spatial interpolative methods in conjunction with object based image analysis to estimate turf grass land cover quantity and allocation in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The goal is to learn how accurately turf grass can be estimated if only a limited portion of the study area is mapped. First, turf grass land cover is mapped at the 0.5 m resolution across the entire Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, a 1143-km² area. Second, the turf grass map is aggregated into 120 m cells (N = 84,661). Third, a random sample …

Effects Of Land Cover Change On Water Quality In Urban Streams At Two Spatial Scales, Sonia Singh, Heejun Chang

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

This study examines the relationships between land cover change and water quality change in three urbanizing watersheds in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States: Burnt Bridge Creek, Salmon Creek, and the Tualatin River. All three watersheds have had many of their water quality parameters exceeding Total Maximum Daily Loads as required by their state’s environmental agencies in the past decades. By using the National Land Cover Datasets classified by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for 1992, 2001 and 2006 and water quality data for a period between 1991 and 2010, this paper aims to examine whether changes …

Impacts Of Remotely Sensed Land Use Data On Watershed Hydrologic Change Assessment, Gi-Choul Ahn, Steven I. Gordon, Carolyn J. Merry

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

Urbanization affects the stream system of a watershed. Increased urbanization alters the land cover and surface characteristics, the stream channel characteristics, and pollutant load of a stream system by increasing the amount of impervious surface. Once rural, forest, or wetland areas are changed to streets, highways, parking lots, sidewalks, and building rooftops. This results in large volumes of runoff being generated for an intense storm over a relatively short time period. As a result, sensitive ecosystems are likely to be damaged by increased urbanization.

Projecting the impact of land use changes on a watershed scale often requires the use of …

Measuring And Modeling Of Urban Growth And Its Impacts On Vegetation And Species Habitats In Greater Orlando, Florida, Sunhui Sim, Victor Mesev

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

Urban growth is widely regarded as an important driver of environmental and social problems. It causes the loss of informal open space and wildlife habitats. Timely and accurate assessments of future urban growth scenarios and associated environmental impacts are crucial for urban planning, policy decision, and natural resource management. In this study, five distinct scenarios ("no constraints", "compact development", "transit-oriented development", "agriculture protection" and "environmental protection" scenarios) were tested on Greater Orlando, Florida, along with conservation objectives and projections for future land use/cover from development demands. The study examined the consequences of alternative scenarios of urban growth on potential habitat …

Introduction: Geospatial Analysis Of Urban Environment, Changjoo Kim

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

To provide a timely snapshot of current research that utilizes geospatial analysis and modeling in urban environment, the Korea-America Association for Geospatial and Environmental Sciences (KAGES) and the editorship of the International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research (IJGER) organized a special issue of IJGER on the theme of geospatial analysis and urban environment. Eight articles out of 13 submitted manuscripts have been published in this issue. This article provides an overview of the articles published in the special issue.

Assessing Survivability Of The Beijing Subway System, Yan Li, Hyun Kim

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

The Beijing subway system, the third largest in the world, serves more than ten million passengers a day. As Beijing is the capital city of China and thus a booming urban center, its subway system has experienced rapid evolution from a local single line system to a complicated network. Due to its constantly increasing complexity, the system is both a critical asset for a local transit artery and a bridge between intercity transportation modes, increasing the issue of network survivability in the face of potential outages of network components. In this study, we provide a connectivity-based survivability measure with which …

Precipitation Patterns And Trends In The Metropolitan Area Of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Anke P.M. Keuser

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

This study investigated changes in mean and extreme precipitation in the metropolitan area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in an attempt to find the effects of urban areas on precipitation patterns. Precipitation data were obtained from a gridded (8-km spacing) historical climatic dataset for Wisconsin for 1950-2006. The Mann-Kendall test and the Sen’s slope test were applied to investigate temporal trends. Monthly wind directions were examined against monthly precipitation patterns. Main findings from the study include the following: (1) Annual precipitation significantly increased in the northern part of the study area during 1950-2006, whereas extreme precipitation showed virtually no trends; (2) The …