Assessing urban land use/land cover change in Springfield, Missouri, 1972--2000

General urbanization trends indicate that population density is decreasing in the urban core of midwestern cities, while the population density of outlying areas has increased. These outlying areas, which traditionally support non-urban land uses, are being converted to urban uses. This paper will provide methods to identify rates of urban growth, determine major land cover types being converted to urban uses and use landscape metrics to determine the amount of fragmentation that is occurring within the various land cover types.; This thesis utilizes multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery to assess the rate and direction of urban growth in Springfield, Missouri and its surrounding metropolitan areas. Landsat satellite imagery will be acquired from 1972 through 2000 in approximately five-year intervals. These images are classified using six land use/land cover classes and change analysis is performed on each image. The non-urban land use/land cover in the study area experienced a large decline in all categories, while the urban class grew by 280 percent. Landscape metrics are run on the classified images at the landscape-, class-, and patch-levels to determine the amount of fragmentation each land use/land cover class experienced during the 30 year study period. All land cover classes became more fragmented.