# Presentation: 566952

## Monitoring Land Cover and Land Use Change for Great Lakes Network Parks

## Land Cover/Land Use Change Monitoring Questions

- What is the magnitude and direction of change in spatial patterns of LULC in and adjacent to parks over time? Spatial patterns to include such measures as land cover class, corridors, fragmentation, juxtaposition, edge, road density, number of homes, etc.
- What are the changes in area and shape in urban, agricultural, and other areas dominated by human landuse within a defined monitoring region for each park.
- What are the changes in forest harvest amounts and patterns in each park monitoring region?
- How has the human occupation density, measured either by population or building density, changed in each monitoring region?

## Acreage of Parks and Land Cover Area of Interest

**Acreage of Parks and Land Cover Area of Interest**

## Three Distinct Protocols

- Differences are based on:
-    Size of parks
-    Urban vs Forested Adjacent Landscapes
-    MISS, Lower SACN, INDU – Minnesota Land Cover Classification System (MLCCS), which incorporates NVCS classification with additional urban classes
-    PIRO, SLBE, APIS, GRPO – Fine scale imagery and metrics, using NVCS classification to the formation level
-    Upper SACN, VOYA, ISRO – Fine scale imagery, but either broader metrics or sampling rather than complete census
- Protocols for all parks will also include delineation of roads, buildings and developed areas as well as disturbance events (fire, windthrow, etc.), for the within park area of interest (Park + 300 meter buffer)

## We are currently working to incorporate two classification approaches:

- 	**National Vegetation Classification System (NVCS)**
**	****Minnesota Land Cover Classification System (MLCCS) **

- Example of MLCCS land cover mapping on urban landscape

## Fine Scale Metrics

**Fine-scale (Park and immediately adjacent lands) Metrics:**
*  **Land Use/Land Cover*
-     Land cover classes mapped/measured
- Closed-canopy forest area
- Total agricultural  area
- Row-crop agriculture
- Urban/suburban area
- Forested, non-forested wetland area
- Built-structure density
- Road location and type

*Derived metrics – from measured/mapped data above*
-    Size:
- Average forest patch size
- Median Forest patch size
- Average urban/agricultural patch size
- Shape
- Average forest perimeter/area ratio

## Derived metrics - Continued

*Derived metrics - Continued*
- Edge:
- Forest Edge density – km/km2 or similar metric
- Mean distance to agriculture/urban edge
- Road density
- Average distance to roads
- Area greater than 80 meters to a road
- Fragmentation
- Wetlands
- Net change in total wetlands area within each NVCS physiognomic class
- Area of per-class transition for NVCS subclass wetlands.
- Dynamic Environments* –* These components will most likely be sampled locations rather than complete census
- Average change in bluff base and top position
- Change in sand bar, point, and beach size, shape, and location
- Change in stream channel location

## NVCS Hierarchical Classification

- Category . . . .Example
-  Class . . . .Open Tree Canopy
-      Subclass . . . .Evergreen Open Tree Canopy
-         Group . . . . .Temperate or Subpolar Needle-leaved Evergreen Open Tree
-                              Canopy
-              Subgroup . . . .Natural/Seminatural
-                  Formation . . . . Rounded-crowned temperate or subpolar needle-leaved
-                                            evergreen open tree canopy.
**Floristic Categories**
-                           Alliance . . . .*Juniperus occidentalis *Woodland Alliance
-                                Association . . . . *Juniperus occidentalis /Artemesia tridentata*

**NVCS Hierarchical Classification**

## MLCCS has adapted the NVCS, using similar hierarchical approach, 

**MLCCS has adapted the NVCS, using similar hierarchical approach, **
**but has developed more detailed classes for cultural landscapes**

## Coarse Scale Land Cover Metrics

- Coarse scale metrics will be very similar, but will include a reduced suite of classes
- The Network will likely use existing datasets rather than manual delineation of land cover, roads, buildings, or other features
- Land Cover Analysis using National Land Cover Dataset (Currently developed with LANDSAT Imagery – 30 meter satellite imagery)
- Analysis of Road Density using Roads Network from U.S. Census TIGER data
- Analysis of Human Population Change and Building Density using U.S. Census data

## Frequency of Land Cover Analysis

- Schedule will follow the Terrestrial Vegetation Protocol, which currently involves a 5 year return interval
- In addition to complete coverage of land cover classification to the NVCS Formation level, the LCLU protocol will likely include updating the NVCS Vegetation Map at 1 kilometer blocks centered on permanent plots established in the Terrestrial Vegetation Program
- Aerial photography will be acquired  on this return interval, either through direct contracting with vendors, or cooperation with other programs.
- Current plans are to standardize on 1:12,000 scale imagery, and 0.15-0.2 meter resolution ortho-imagery

## Comparison of Satellite Imagery and Aerial Photography

**Comparison of Satellite Imagery and Aerial Photography**

## Remote Sensing Priorities and Products Acquired to Date

**Remote Sensing Priorities and Products Acquired to Date**

## Current Projects in Land Cover/Land Use 

- Land Cover/Land Use Protocol Development – Paul Bolstad, Professor in Forest Ecology
- Land Cover Mapping and Analysis for MISS & Lower SACN using the Minnesota Land Cover Classification System – Bart Richardson, MN DNR
- Early Generation Aerial Photography to Provide Historical Context to Current Land Cover within and adjacent to Parks
- 		INDU – Project with Volker Radeloff at University of Wisconsin using 1938, 1980s, 2005 imagery
- 		VOYA – Project with Bill Befort at Minnesota DNR using 1927 imagery
- 		APIS – Project with Paul Bolstad at University of Minnesota using 1938 imagery
- 		GRPO & MISS – Project with Mike Hyslop at Michigan Technological University using 1940 (GRPO) and 1937 (MISS) imagery

## Housing and Road Density Growth in and around Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore 1938-2005

**Housing and Road Density Growth in and around Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore 1938-2005**

- Shelley Schmidt1, Volker C. Radeloff1, Peter Budde2, and Ulf Gafvert3

-  The current landscape is highly fragmented and few
-   areas are free from human disturbance.
-  Patch density and road density have increased
-   significantly, resulting in decreased mean patch size.
-  Road and housing growth outside the park have
-   increased at more than twice the rate as growth inside
-   the park.
-  Housing and road development are creating
-   fragmentation patterns on the landscape that are not
-   easily reversed.
-  Future fragmentation could be limited by:
-  Protecting existing large forest patches
-  Clustering new development
-  Decommissioning unnecessary roads

- Conclusions

- Introduction

- 1Department of Forest Ecology and Management, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- 2National Park Service – Midwest Region GIS Technical Service Center
- 3National Park Service – Great Lakes Network Inventory and Monitoring Program

- Objective

- Quantify the change in road and building density in
- and around Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore between 1938 and 2005 using aerial photography and satellite imagery.

- Methods

- Roads and buildings within the boundaries of INDU and within a 3.2 km buffer outside of the park were digitized for 1938 and 2005.
- 25 meter buffers around roads was applied to account for edge effects.
- Change in road and building density and the resulting landscape fragmentation was calculated.

- Study Area

- Results

- Road & Housing Density Change, 1938 to 2005

- 2005 orthophotography of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

- Future Work

- Upcoming steps in this project will include expanding to the rest of INDU, incorporating a 1980 time point, classifying landcover, and expanding our methods to other Great Lakes network National parks, beginning with Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

- For further information, contact Shelley Schmidt at slschmid@wisc.edu

- 1938

- 2005

- 2005 Orthophoto of Study Area

- We thank the National Park Service and the US Forest Service North Central Research Station for funding this project

- Roads

- Buildings

- 1938

- 1938

- 2005

- 2005

-  National Parks serve as areas of ecological conservation
-   by protecting habitat and preventing landcover change.
-  Housing and road development near national parks can
-   isolate them and limit their ecological function by:
- Fragmenting wildlife habitat
- Altering hydrology
- Spreading exotic species
- Polluting natural areas
-  We focused on one park, Indiana Dunes National
-   Lakeshore (INDU), established in 1966, for this study.

- Building density has increased 7 fold
- between 1938 and 2005.

- Road density has nearly doubled between 1938 and 2005.

- Road density outside of INDU has seen a pronounced increase, while the increase within INDU has been more subtle.

- The percentage of the study
- area occupied by roads (+25
- meter buffer) is highest outside
- the park in 2005.

- Patch density has increased both within and outside of INDU, although to a much greater degree outside the park.

- Landscape fragmentation is occurring, with decreasing mean area per patch both within and outside of INDU.

- Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, containing 6,000 hectares, runs for nearly 40.2 km along southern Lake Michigan.  The park is home to beaches, sand dunes, bogs, wetlands, woodland forests, an 1830’s French Canadian homestead, and a working 1900 era farm.  Indiana Dunes is ranked 7th among national parks in native plant diversity.  Ninety of the 1,418 plants that have been found in the park are on Indiana’s threatened or endangered list

**WISCONSIN**

**ILLINOIS**

**MICHIGAN**

**INDIANA**

**OHIO**

**ONTARIO**

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## Great Lakes Network Vegetation Mapping Schedule

**Great Lakes Network Vegetation Mapping Schedule**