Urban Dynamics: Benefits and Uses
Why Are We Doing This Work ?
The rapid growth of urban and suburban areas has many environmental
impacts and is a major issue in today's world. By better understanding the
growth that has already occurred and the resultant impacts, we can better
predict future growth and impacts. This results in better planning.
Work will provide a greater understanding of urban land use change.
- Provides insight into the interactions between the physiographic
and socio-economic variables which contribute to urban growth.
- Provides a better understanding of the issues involved in temporal
land cover characterization for urban areas.
- Applied within the objective scientific
framework of the USGS, yields credible and comprehensive insights
into the character and impacts of land use change that can contribute
to economic growth balanced with environmental protection.
- Provides urban planners, policy and decision makers, earth
scientists, and global change researchers with the information necessary to
measure trends in urban sprawl, analyze patterns of water pollution and
sedimentation, examine the impacts of development on ecosystems, and
develop predictive modeling techniques to better forecast future areas
of urban growth.
- Provides the data necessary for understanding the linkages between
land use change and the nutrient loads and sedimentation rates measured in
dated sediment cores.
Work will provide other long-term benefits.
- Establishes program that provides a spatial inventory and a
geographic assessment of the land use changes occurring in the nation's
largest metropolitan regions.
- Establishes a methodology, based on advanced spatial analysis
techniques, to accurately document and evaluate the land use changes
resulting from the dynamics of urban and rural growth patterns.
- Establishes more innovative partnerships and contracts with the
private sector.
- Capitalizes on the USGS investment in the national
topographic map and remote sensing data archives.
- Increases public awareness of USGS products, especially historical
archives, and promote the use of USGS spatial data with current GIS tools.
- Brings public and private groups together to start developing these
integrated temporal datasets that are required to monitor, analyze and
predict urban growth patterns and landscape change.
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