using modis land-use/land-cover data and hydrological modeling for estimating nutrient...

Northern Gulf Institute - GeoSystems Research Institute

Mississippi State University

Using MODIS Land-Use/Land-

Cover Data and Hydrological

Modeling for Estimating Nutrient

Concentrations

Vladimir J. Alarcon, William McAnally,

Gary Ervin, Christopher Brooks

ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Introduction

• United States land area: 0.9 billion hectares

– 20 percent is cropland, 26 percent permanent

grassland pasture and range land, and 28 percent

forest-use land.

– Land used for agricultural purposes in 1997 totaled

nearly 1.2 billion acres, over (52 percent of total

U.S. land area).

– Land use in the Southeastern United States is

predominantly covered by forests and agricultural

lands.


Introduction

• Water quality and flow regime influence the

ecological “health” of aquatic biota.

• In the Southeastern USA

– agricultural land use can comprise 50% or more of

land cover,

– sediment and nutrient runoff can seriously degrade

the ecological quality of aquatic environments.


Objectives

• Connecting hydrological processes to

biological system response studies in the

Upper Tombigbee watershed

– a hydrological model of the watershed was

developed.

– model development and its use for providing

stream flow, runoff, and nutrient concentrations to

establish relationships between stream

nutrients, runoff and discharge, and biotic data.

– .


Methods

• Study area:

– Upper Tombigbee

• located in Northwestern

Alabama and

Northeastern Mississippi,

USA

• Drains approximately

1390325 ha

• main contributor of flow

to the Mobile River

• approximate average

stream flow of 169 m3/s.


Methods

• Topographical data:

– USGS DEM,

• 3 arc-second (1:250,000-

scale, 300 m)

• A seamless topographical

– “mosaicking” several

DEMs that covered the

area.

• ArcInfo (GRID) was used

to fill grid cells with no-

data values (con,

focalmax, and focalmean)


Methods

• Land Use data:

– Two land use datasets

• USGS GIRAS (1986)

• NASA MODIS

MOD12Q1 (2001-2004)

– The MODIS MOD12 Q1

data was geo-processed

for the dataset to be

consistent with the USGS

GIRAS dataset (land use

categories).


Methods/Results

• Biological Data and Watershed Delineation:

– Geo-locations of field-collected data on fish and

mussel were used to delineate the watershed

under study.

• Produced sub-watersheds contained at least four

sampled species per sub-watershed

• Only samples collected during 2002-2004 and 1977-

1982 were used for these analyses, to coincide with

the GIRAS (1986) and MODIS (2001-2004) land use

data.


Methods

• Hydrological Modeling

– Hydrological Simulation Program Fortran

(HSPF).

• Simulation of non-point source watershed hydrology

and water quality.

• Time-series of meteorological/water-quality data,

land use and topographical data are used to estimate

stream flow hydrographs and polluto-graphs.

• The model simulates interception, soil moisture,

surface runoff, interflow, base flow, snowpack depth

and water content, snowmelt, evapo-transpiration,

and ground-water recharge.


Methods

• Hydrological Modeling

– Nutrients (total nitrogen, TN, and total

phosphorus, TP) concentrations were estimated

using export coefficient for the region (*).

• (*) Lin, J.P.: Review of Published Export Coefficient and Event Mean Concentration (EMC) Data.

Wetlands Regulatory Assistance Program ERDC TN-WRAP-04-3, September (2004)

Land use category Average TP (kg/ha-

year)

Average TN (kg/ha-

year)

Row Crops 4.46 16.09

Non Row Crops 1.08 5.19

Forested 0.236 2.86

Urban 1.91 9.97

Pasture 1.5 8.65

Feedlot/Manure

Storage 300.7 3110.7

Mixed Agriculture 1.134 16.53


Results

• Land Use:

– From 1986 to 2003

agricultural lands

increased in almost

34%, forest lands

decreased in 16%.


Results

• Hydro modeling:

– Once an optimum watershed delineation was

achieved, HSPF was launched from within BASINS

to initialize the HSPF model application for the

Upper Tombigbee watershed. The initialization was

done for each of the land use datasets used in this

study (GIRAS and MODIS). Hence, two

hydrological models were set-up with two different

time periods of simulation: 1980-1990, and 1996-

2006.


Results

• Hydro modeling:

– From delineated watershed to HSPF model


Results

• Hydro modeling: Calibrated HSPF models


Results

• Nutrient estimation

(selected sub-basins) Sub-basin

Average

GIRAS

Maximum

GIRAS

3 quartile

GIRAS

43 0.43 2.04 0.62

51 1.11 5.26 1.66

54 0.80 3.75 1.12

Sub-basin

Average

MODIS

Maximum

MODIS

3 quartile

MODIS

43 0.33 2.17 0.51

51 0.88 6.09 1.17

54 0.68 4.36 1.06

Sub-basin

Average

GIRAS

Maximum

GIRAS

3 quartile

GIRAS

43 2.30 10.91 3.32

51 4.40 20.94 6.61

54 3.53 16.65 5.00

Sub-basin

Average

MODIS

Maximum

MODIS

3 quartile

MODIS

43 1.76 11.42 2.69

51 3.42 23.70 4.55

54 2.98 19.07 4.62

Total Nitrogen

Total Phosphorus


Results

• Nutrient estimation (all sub-basins)

TOTAL

PHOSPHORUS

(Mg/L) Average Maximum

% Change

(Maximum)

GIRAS 1.23 5.66

37MODIS 1.20 7.78

TOTAL

NITROGEN

(Mg/L) Average Maximum

% Change

Maximum

GIRAS 4.72 21.58

34MODIS 4.48 28.94


Conclusions

• Methodology for the introduction of land use data from

MODIS MOD 12Q1 into the Hydrological Program

Fortran (HSPF) is shown to be successful.

• MODIS datasets for 2001 through 2004 were geo-

processed and the results are shown to be consistent

with historical trends in land use for the region of

Upper Tombigbee watershed.

– From 1986 to 2003 agricultural lands increased in almost

34%, forest lands decreased in 16%, and range-land almost

quadruple in size.


Conclusions

• The watershed delineation process, guided by

geographical locations of sampling points of mollusk

and fish data, allowed the generation of sub-watersheds

that captured the distribution of biological data

throughout the study area.

• A comparison of nutrient concentration values for sub-

basins 43, 51, and 54 showed:

– Average and 3rd-quartile total phosphorus (TP)

concentrations do not differ greatly when using either land

use dataset.

– Only maximum concentrations showed to have increased

from 6% to 16%.


Conclusions

• Similarly,

– Maximum total nitrogen (TN) concentrations were found to

have increased when using MODIS land use data (with

respect to TN concentrations estimated using GIRAS land use

data). Percent increments in TN concentration values are in-

between 5% to 15%.

• For all sub-basins:

– Maximum TP and TN concentrations seem to have increased

in about 37 % and 34%, respectively, from 1986 to 2003.

– This increase in maximum nutrient concentrations seems to

correlate with the 34% increase in agricultural areas in the

Upper Tombigbee watershed, from 1986 to 2003.

using modis land-use/land-cover data and hydrological modeling for estimating nutrient...

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