Hill Country Associates Pedernales River analysis Team: Kelly Blanton, Erica Tice, William Weldon, and Paul Starkel

Overview Introduction Data Literature Review Methods Timeline Budget Final Deliverables

Introduction The Pedernales River Basin is an area of approximately 815,000 acres located in the central Texas Hill Country The Pedernales river is prone to major fluctuation in water levels Monitoring water quality and quantity is important Irrigates agricultural and ranching land Contributes 23% of flow into Lake Travis, a critical source of drinking water for Austin, Texas

Data 2014 USDA NAIP Imagery Aerial imagery showing change National LULC Data Set (1992, 2001, 2006, 2011) TNRIS TPWD Ecological Systems Classification Project Texas Water Development Board Aerial imagery showing change Shapefiles showing Land use and Land Cover (LULC) amounts across the area Ecological Classification system similar to LULC classification

Using GIS to Detect Changes in Land Use Land Cover for Electrical transmission Line Sitting and Expansion Planning in Winona County, Minnesota, USA. By Charles U. Uzoukwu Uzoukwu was able to detect LULC changes in percentage by calculating raster area of each category in 1991 and comparing it to 2001 data. This way he was able to show the specific size of the change that had occurred in different types of land use. Using percentage change in LULC he used the Cell Statistics Function and “CON” tool to isolate and display areas of change between 1991 and 2001.

Little River Watershed, Tennessee Five main LULC classes were classified: water, commercial land, residential land, mixed forest, and agricultural land. Images were taken at a two year interval from 1984-2010. Landsat images were used to observe LULC change. Since the spatial resolution of Landsat TM/ETM+ images is 30 meters, each pixel of the image is mixed in nature, especially in transition boundaries among different LULC classes (Zhu and Li 2010). This study showed that there was an increase in urban areas and forest, while a decrease in agriculture. The urban growth was concurrent with a rise in population. The increase in forest land may be aligned to farmers seeking employment in the city and abandoning their farms. Also, an increased conservation effort of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to preserve forest land is attributed to forest growth.

Methods Illustrate the percent change in land use and land cover over the years 1992, 2001, 2006, and 2011 a projection of current and future land use in the Pedernales area Create a visualization of land use and land cover change over time with population data Show effects of population growth over time by showing increase or decrease in amount of 16 land use classes measure our pixel size and get a total land area of the different LULC classifications Use cell statistics functions to show the actual areas where change has occurred between different years of data

Timeline

Budget

Final Deliverables Report detailing changes in Land use and Land cover in the Pedernales river basin Analysis and predictions of population growth for the study area Shapefiles showing land use patterns in the Pedernales river basin area KMZ files for website access of analysis maps

Resources Pedernales River Watershed: Brush Control Assessment and Feasibility Study. Austin, TX: Lower Colorado River Authority, 2000. 3-5. Pedernales River Watershed. Lower Colorado River Authority, 2000. Web. Feb. 2015. Texas Water Symposium. "Challenges Facing The Pedernales Basin." Challenges Facing The Pedernales Basin. Texas Public Radio, 27 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 Feb. 2015. Pedernales River Watershed: Brush Control Assessment and Feasibility Study. Austin, TX: Lower Colorado River Authority, 2000. 3-1, 3-4. Pedernales River Watershed. Lower Colorado River Authority, 2000. Web. Feb. 2015.