Land Use Land Cover Change Projection for use in Municipal Water Resource Planning in the Saugahatchee Watershed

Abstract

The present work analyzes land use land cover changes in the Saugahatchee watershed through the use of remotely sensed satellite imagery. Urban growth has effect on the land use pattern in the local as well as in the surrounding region. Various models of land use change are extensively used for forecasting urban growth and future land use patterns. Modeling land use conversion patterns is the first step to understand the urban growth process. This work develops a land transformation model of urban growth to forecast land use changes in the saugahatchee sub-watershed surrounding Auburn-Opelika metropolitan area in the state of Alabama. This work uses GIS and image processing software namely ERDAS Imagine to process land use data and performs logistic regression analysis. Logistic regression is used to model land use change pattern in the area under investigation. The modeling is done in the GIS environment and spatial output of the model is fed into biophysical models, SWAT, to help determine the impact that LULC has on water quality and quantity and help resource manager evaluate future scenario of development.