Patterns of Land Use Change Around a Large Reservoir

Reservoirs are built to control floods, provide water for irrigation and municipal supply, generate electric power, augment low flows for navigation and water quality control, and provide improved fishing and recreation opportunity. A reservoir is justified if the benefit it provides to society exceeds the cost to develop it. Much research has been done to determine the benefit of a water resources development to society as a whole. Some research has explored the benefit of such a facility to a region. Very little research exists on the effects of a reservoir on the immediately surrounding area. It seems reasonable that effects caused by the proximity of a reservoir intensify as one draws closer to the lake. Demand for land shifts from uses unrelated to the project to project oriented uses. Property value changes, and some landowners are able to reap large profits. Others, forced to sell all their land for construction of the reservoirs are not so fortunate. Simultaneously, land use change affect the environmental quality experienced by third parties, adjacent land owners and visitors to the area. By examining the spatial patterns of land use changes around a reservoir, this study hopes to aid planners anticipate wind fall profits to landowners, improve environmental quality control, guide the land use planning of surrounding communities, and project future demands for increased services placed on local governments. The general hypothesis of this study is that the spatial patterns of land use change are influenced by economic and geographic characteristics of the reservoir and reservoir area. Several hypotheses concerning the effects of relative location around the reservoir, the effects of relative location on a peninsula, the effects of the characteristics of an individual site, and the effects of road access are tested using analysis of variance and multiple regression. The data used for the analysis is based on Lake Cumberland, a reservoir in Southern Kentucky. The area immediately surrounding the lake is divided into 19 peninsulas, and each of these is subdivided into 100 quadralaterals. For each of these quadralaterals data such as slope, water frontage, and land use changes are obtained, This method of subdivision allows comparison of the patterns of land use changes on peninsulas as well as around the lake. Land use for the four years - 1938, 1951, 1960, and 1967 - provide the basis for computing the land use changes. All areas for each date are classified as residential, commercial, public, or agricultural. Any location shifting among these categories is defined as a land use change. The analysis indicates patterns of land use change surrounding the lake. Factors such as road access, slope, view, and location on a peninsula proved to be significantly associated with different patterns of land use change. Both the patterns and their degree of association with other variables have shifted over time. The probability of experiencing land use change for each observed combination of the significant factors is calculated for three periods in project time. From such information, it is possible to simulate land use change around other reservoirs

A Perspective on Economic Impact

The institutions responsible for water resources management in the United States have originated as political responses to major social issues. Each agency institutionalized a procedure for structuring and comparing alternatives in the formulation of its total program. Each agency originally sought to promote effective resolution of its social issue (flood control, development of arid lands, soil erosion, etc.), but more recent efforts have sought better coordination among agency practices through a common procedure largely derived from economic theory. Any procedure, however, varies in application with the interpretation and judgment of individual planners. Today, public pressures have brought political directives requiring consideration of the local and nationwide impacts of projects that occur through direct, indirect, and secondary means in the spheres of economic, social and environmental effects. The body of the study reviews fourteen specific impact issues with the goals of providing planners a methodology for dealing with each one and of providing the theoretically inclined a basis for improving each methodology. The issues are reservoir effects on local property values, reservoir effects on the economy of the local county, changes in income and employment patterns around large reservoirs, patterns of land use change around reservoirs, reservoir effects on revenues and expenditures of local government, reservoir recreation benefits, application of marginal economic analysis to reservoir recreation planning, economic value of natural areas for recreational hunting, for stream fishing, the personal value of real property to its owner, reservoir project caused income redistribution, achievement of more flexible procedures for reservoir operation in order to match changes in demand for project output with time, estimation of flood damages by the time pattern in which they occur, and operation of reservoir systems for flood control. Each study ls presented in detail in a referenced report, and this report discusses the significance of the findings of the studies, individually and as a group