Water quality planning in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana is reviewed in terms of use of land use data and satellite imagery. A land use inventory applicable to water quality planning and developed through computer processing of LANDSAT-1 imagery is described

Hessling, A. H.

Mara, T. G.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LAND USE INVENTORY FOR REGIONAL L-10
PLANNING USING SATELLITE IMAGERY
By A. H. Hassling, Executive Director, and Timothy G. Mara,
Environmental Planner, Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council
of Governments, Cincinnati, Ohio
ABSTRACT
Under provisions of Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control
Act Amendments of 1972, the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of
Governments (OKI) received a grant of $1.9 million for water quality-
planning for a nine county area centered around Cincinnati, Ohio. Similar
grants have been made by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency to
councils of government in other metropolitan areas. The purpose of 208
water quality planning is to identify all sources of water pollution in
major urban-industrial concentrations and to develop effective programs to
reduce such pollution. The planning process includes not only a study of
public sewerage systems and industrial pollution, but also an analysis of
agricultural and urban stormwater runoff. Because water quality is in
large part determined by land use activities and patterns,, detailed up-to-
date land use data is needed. Traditional land use inventory techniques are
too time consuming. Land use data generated by computer processing of
satellite imagery offers a viable alternative for obtaining the needed .
information. This report explains the need for land use data for water
quality planning, problems which might be encountered in the use of
satellite imagery, and the generally favorable results obtained by OKI.
INTRODUCTION
The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (PL 92-500)
created several programs to fight water pollution. Under provisions of
Section 208 of that act, regional councils of government such as OKI were
given the opportunity and the funding to undertake regional water quality
planning. Before beginning the discussion of OKI's experience in the use of
a land use inventory generated through computer processing LANDSAT-1 digital
tapes in the water quality planning process,-it would be useful first to
take a look at regional planning in general, the present level of regional
planning activity in this country, and water quality planning in particular.
REGIONAL PLANNING
Regional Planning was born out of a realization that many of the
problems and opportunities which face local government, particularly in
metropolitan areas, cannot be met individually be each county, city, village
and township. These problems and opportunities cover a wide range of
public concern, and include such things as highways, mass transit, housing,
health services, parks and recreation, water supply, solid waste, air
quality, sewage disposal and coastal zone management. These are problems
that do not respect political boundaries which, in most cases, were chosen
long ago and without regard to the efficient and adequate provision of
public services. For example, in the ten county OKI region (only nine
counties are participating in the water quality program) centered around
Cincinnati there are 128 municipalities, 81 townships and an even larger
number of special districts. Regional councils of government, such as OKI,
were created in the belief that communities should be able to achieve
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through collective action the goals that none can achieve alone.
As of July 1, 1971, there were 247 Standard Metropolitan Statistical
Areas in the United States, each centered around a central city of
50,000 or more population. Most have a regional council of governments or
regional planning authority. In addition, most states have broken down
their area into sub-state multi-county planning districts with councils of
governments. According to the 1974 Regional Council Directory published
by the National Association of Regional Councils,there are over 600
councils of governments in the United States.
Each has undertaken planning activities in various functional areas to
one degree or another. OKI, for example, has completed an overall develop-
ment plan, as well as plans for highways, housing, open space, water
supply, sewage disposal and solid waste. Currently, the OKI staff is work-
ing on a mass transit plan and a water quality plan as well as updating
other plans.
Because satellite imagery is furnished by NASA for scenes covering a
rather large area and because of other economies of scale inherent in the
interpretative process, the development of a land use inventory from
satellite imagery is most practical if done at a fairly large scale.
Regional planning areas fall within the scale, and regional councils of
governments are an obvious and substantial market for the use of data
generated from satel-lite imagery.
WATER QUALITY PLANNING
OKI was one of the first regional councils of governments to receive a
grant from the U. S. EPA for 208 regional water quality planning. At
present, some 45 agencies have either begun work on 208 plans or have been
assured of EPA funding. As many as 100 additional agencies will be funded
before the end of the current fiscal year. The new 208 program differs
from past HUD-financed water and sewer planning in that this new EPA-
administered program deals with all sources of water pollution, not just
pollution from municipal sewerage systems. Other sources of water pollution
for which planning responsibility is given are industrial discharges and
what are termed "non-point" sources. These non-point sources include
sedimentation and runoff of pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural
areas, urban runoff, erosion from construction sites, and leachates from
septic tanks.
THE LAND USE ELEMENT OF WATER QUALITY PLANNING
A major task of the 208 planning program is the prediction of water
quality in the rivers and lakes resulting from existing and future land
uses. This will lead to the formulation of new land use policies which
reflect the need to improve water.quality. To achieve this, OKI has
developed a model capable of predicting sediment and nutrient flow into
the waterways of the region. An essential input to the model is an
accurate map of land use. OKI needs to know how much acreage of each land
use type is within each of 225 drainage areas within the study area.
Other variables include slope and soil type.
Each land use type has a special characteristic which is important
in the calculation of the quantity and quality of stormwater runoff. For
example, land used for growing crops is often tilled in the spring when
rainfall is heaviest. Much of the rainfall is absorbed into the earth,
but erosion can be significant under such circumstances, resulting in
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sedimentation in nearby streams. Pesticides and fertilizer substances may
also be washed into the stream. This differs from what happens in a central
city area where virtually all of the ground is covered by pavement and
buildings. Little or none of the water is absorbed into the earth. Instead,
it flows rapidly into storm sewers, carrying with it dirt from streets and
buildings.
The relationship of land use planning to water quality planning, then,
becomes quite obvious. The inventory of present land, use together with
population projections will serve as a basis for developing a future land
use map. Given future land use, the water quality model will be run again
to determine the impact of future development-on water quality. This
analysis will lead to an identification of critical areas, areas where
alternatives will have to be developed to minimize any deleterious impact
on water quality. This may involve redirecting growth to other areas where
the impact might not be so severe or changing the character of the growth
to minimize any harmful impact on water quality. The water quality plan
will, in effect, contain a significant land use planning element. The 208
water quality planning program may provide the most rational basis for
land use planning available to date.
Because the 208 program involves planning agencies in a type of plan-
ning with which they have not previously dealt, new data systems must be
developed. This is particularly true in regard to land use data.
Land use information currently available to planning agencies is
generally not adequate for water quality planning purposes. In almost every
case, agricultural forest and vacant land has been lumped into one category-
miscellaneous, and urban land uses often are not identified in terms usable
for water quality planning. Often, the data is not current, not consistent
for the entire study area or not capable of being tabulated by drainage area.
Therefore, new region-wide land use inventories are needed.
The OKI Region, like most regional planning areas, is fairly large. It
covers 2700 square miles. For this reason/ the traditional techniques for
land use inventory - field inspection and manual interpretation of aerial
photographs - were judged to be impractical in that they are too costly and
more importantly, too time consuming. Time is critical because the water
quality program is only a two year effort, and a land use inventory is an
input which is needed very early in the program. Given this need" to produce
a land use inventory in the shortest possible time, the OKI staff looked for
and found a much faster method - the use of satellite imagery.
THE DECISION TO USE SATELLITE IMAGERY
None of the OKI staff had any experience with satellite imagery. The
staff first heard about the potential applications of satellite imagery in
regional planning at the annual meeting of the American Institute of
Planners in October, 1974. Subsequently, representatives of various private
firms which market the interpretation of satellite imagery as a service met
with the OKI staff. Examples of data and visual aids from previous studies
convinced th'e staff that a satisfactory land use inventory could be obtained.
Most impressive of all was the fact that the resultant data is very detailed
both in terms of the categories which can be identified and in that the
dominant land use can be determined for each 1.12 acre cell or "pixel".
Also the data can be displayed in a visually attractive format with color
coded acetate overlays or a color coded composite map. This is important
to public agencies such as OKI which are committed to public involvement in
their planning programs. Another major advantage of this technique is that
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the interpreted images are already computerized and the data can be
summarized by county, drainage basin or other statistical unit.
The next step was to obtain approval from the OKI Executive Committee
(OKI's governing body composed mainly of elected officials) that the
expenditure would be a wise one. The staff had earlier estimated the
cost of generating a land use inventory using traditional techniques of
aerial photo interpretation and field inventory. Therefore, the staff was
able to show that a land use inventory generated from computer processed
satellite imagery would not only be comparable in terms of cost, and possibly
even lower, but that a significant savings in time could be achieved, possi-
bly as much as six months. Based on this information, the OKI Executive
Committee unanimously agreed to approve the use of satellite imagery.
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency requires that OKI obtain its
approval before entering into any contract exceeding $2,500. After a
reasonable review period, EPA approved OKI's contract with the Bendix
Aerospace System Division without revision.
THE RESULTS
The final product is a 10 - category land use map of the OKI Region
at a scale of 1" = 5000' showing the following land use activities: grass-
land, idle cropland, active cropland, water, two categories of forest land,
and four densities of urban development defined in terms of the percent of
ground covered by pavement and buildings. In addition to a composite map,
OKI also received separate acetate overlays for each land use category.
Since these overlays are reproducible, they are particularly useful as work
maps.
OKI's experience in the development of a land use inventory has been
a successful one. The total acreage for each drainage area as measured
from the satellite data matched very closely the acreage measured by using
a planimeter. Field checks and interviews with farmers and agricultural
agents have shown that the categorization has been accurate within a
reasonable level of tolerance.
OKI has also learned more about the limitations of such data and
problems which might be enco'untered in generating this information. For
example, even .though the two LANDSAT satellites now circling the globe each
pass over the OKI Region once every eighteen days, it was necessary to use
LANDSAT images from April 14, 1973, because none of the more current images were
taken on cloudless days. While a 1973 image is quite acceptable, and
certainly more up-to-date than anything otherwise available, one should not
count on' using images taken last week, for example.
Also, delays can be expected in obtaining the LANDSAT-1 tapes from
NASA. It may take as much as a month. This delay can be embarrassing if
promises of delivery of the final product have been made to local planners,
•committees, or other interested parties.
Then, too, the data itself may require some manual interpretation.
For example, the data received by OKI presented the acreage for cropland
as significantly less than that identified in various agricultural surveys.
After some investigation, it was discovered that the cropland category only
included row crops such as corn and soybeans, and not wheat or alfalfa
which were shown as part of the grassland category. Other problems were
encountered because unrelated land uses were found to have the same spectral
characteristics.
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OKI was, however, able to overcome these difficulties through manual
interpretation and division of certain land use categories. It was found
that the categories can be more accurately defined through the use of more
detailed ground truth data.
CONCLUSION
The OKI project has clearly shown an important practical application
of LANDSAT data. Indications are that our success has already encouraged
several of the other existing and potential water quality planning agencies
to consider the use of LANDSAT generated data. Furthermore, the planning
applications need not be limited to water quality analysis. As the
interpretative process becomes more sophisticated and as planners become
more aware of the potential uses of such data, the scope of its use will
undoubtedly expand to include other environmental planning activities.
For example, satellite imagery may be the best way to monitor suburban-
ization or land absorption. The extent to which satellite imagery and
related services will be used for regional planning in the future may
depend upon improved communications and the establishment of a closer
working relationship between the users and the researchers.
REFERENCES
National Association of Regional Councils, "1974 Council Directory",
Washington, D. C., July, 1974.
Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, "Clean Water: What
You Can Do", Cincinnati, Ohio, October, 1974.
Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, "What's It All About?"
Cincinnati, Ohio, January, 1975.
R. H. Rogers, C. L. Wilson, L. E. Reed, N. J. Shah, R. Akeley, T. G. Mara,
V. Elliott Smith, "Environmental Monitoring from Spacecraft Data",
Symposium on Machine Processing of Remotely Sensed Data, at Purdue University,
West Lafayette, Indiana, June, 1975.
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air and Water Programs,
EPA-430/9-73-014, "Methods for Identification and Evaluation of the Nature
and Extent of Non-Point Sources of Pollutants," October, 1973.
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Water Planning Division, (Draft)
"Guidelines for Areawide Waste Water Treatment Management," May, 1974.
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••• xr
LANDSAT-1 BAND 7 IMAGE
OF APRIL 14, 1973 SHOWING
THE OKI REGION
COUNTIES AND MAJOR
RIVERS
OF THE OKI REGION
MAP OF PORTION OF THE
OKI REGION NEAR CINCINNATI
CORE CITY/INDUSTRIAL
CATEGORY OVER WATERSHED MAP
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The development of a land use inventory for regional planning using satellite imagery

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