| Humans have diverse goals for their use of land: mining, water supply, aesthetic enjoyment, recreation, transportation, housing, etc. Any individual living within an actively developing community can look back in time and note how, perhaps slowly but nonetheless dramatically, the total land area dedicated to human use has increased. As our society's basic functioning intensifies, the disappearance of “free” open space is apparent—today, even conservation areas are carefully designated, mapped and controlled. This transition in land use is a result of many individual decisions that occur throughout space and time, often with little concern for the potential impacts on the local environment. Two specific environmental components—the microclimate and surface hydrology—are the focus of this thesis. This study, as well as related tools and bodies of knowledge, should be used to broaden the scientific basis behind land use management decisions.; It will be shown that development can induce predictable changes in measures of the local radiant surface temperature and evapotranspiration fraction—as long as certain features of the development are known. Specifically, the vegetation changes that accompany the development must be noted, as well as the initial climatic state of the land parcel. Additionally, plots of runoff vs. rainfall for gauged basins will be interpreted in terms of the proportion of the basin contributing to a storm event's runoff signal. For a particular basin, four distinct runoff responses, separated by season and antecedent moisture conditions, will be distinguished. The response for the non-summer months under typical antecedent moisture conditions will be shown to be the most representative of and responsive to a basin's land use patterns. A scheme that makes use of satellite-derived land cover patterns and other physical attributes of the basin in order to determine this particular runoff response will be presented. The Soil Conservation Service's curve number (CN) method will also be used to determine the areas of major surface runoff generation within a basin. All of these results will be presented in a form that is compatible with an existing urban growth model. This work thus enhances the model climatologically and hydrologically—both from a localized grid cell and basin outlet perspective. Finally, the validity of a new satellite-derived measure—that of impervious surface coverage—will be presented. |
