An Analysis of Land Use/Land Cover Changes and Population Growth in the Pedernales River Basin Kelly Blanton-Project Manager Paul Starkel-Analyst Erica Tice-Analyst William Weldon-Analyst Prepared By: Overview The Pedernales River Basin is an area of approximately 815,000 acres located in the central Texas Hill Country. Watershed covers the counties of Blanco, Gillespie, Burnett, Hays, Kerr, Kendall, Kimble, and Travis. Blanco and Gillespie are the counties with the majority of coverage by the Pedernales River Basin. Prone to water level fluxuation. Provides habitat for numerous fish and wildlife. Provides 23% of Lake Travis flow, a critical drinking water source for Austin. Problem Statement Is land use and land cover changing in the Pedernales river basin area? To solve this problem: Maps with GIS data analyzed will be beneficial to show change in each individual group Change over time period and population growth Scope Data Landsat 8 imagery from the U.S.G.S Earth Explorer site. Population projection data from Texas Water Redevelopment Board. Pedernales vector polygon and Road data from TNRIS. LU/LC data form the Multi- Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium. Methodology: Task 1: Shapefile Creation and Change detection maps First step: create outline of our study area boundary Second step: create shapefiles of LU/LC for each of the years Third step: get a visual representation of LU/LC changes in the area via creation of change detection maps Methodology: Task 2: Population projections Population projections were pulled from the Texas Water Development Board. Placed in Excel using a newly created table. Showing projections through the year 2070 for each county within the study area. Methodology: Task 3: 2014 Update of LU/LC for the Pedernales Downloaded LANDSAT 8 imagery Mosaicked together two different images, one with leaves, one with no leaves Projected and clipped images in ERDAS Created training data using 4 groups for supervised classification Ran supervised classification Transfer supervised classification result to Arcmap from ERDAS Clip study area from classification result in Arcmap Results LU/LC experienced a decrease in overall forestland. Developed, High Intensity Land experienced a nearly 50% increase. Growing population is a contributing factor. LU/LC maps of 1992, 2001, 2006, and 2011 data. Change Detection maps from , , and Final deliverable of Updated 2014 map. Discussion Classifying each land class proved very time consuming and difficult. Classes were grouped together, presenting a challenge for the computer who had a hard time differentiating these classes. Led to accuracy issues of overabundant developed land on 2014 map. Conclusion A decrease in forested areas and an increase in developed land. LU/LC classification is a very difficult and time consuming process. To accurately produce a LU/LC classification takes a highly trained and skilled team to analyze differentiate spectrally similar classes. NAIP imagery is more appealing but not multispectral which is needed for analysis.