Examining Alternative Indicators of Rural Development and Their Implications for Use in Association with More Traditional Data Sources
Location
Eccles Conference Center
Event Website
http://water.usu.edu/
Start Date
3-27-2006 3:00 PM
End Date
3-27-2006 3:15 PM
Description
Rural land use changes are important factors worthy of consideration in any project designed to examine water quality and use. The Bear River Watershed is composed of an array of biophysical, social and economic landscapes that are all equally important to studying the dynamics of land use change and its subsequent effects on the local hydrological units. Human activities, such as the development of new rural housing, can have important impacts on watershed structures and functions. Research on human activities within ecosystems requires the collection of longitudinal data on how the rural landscape is changing over time. While traditional remote-sensing technology can document changes in land cover associated with human activity, they are an imperfect mechanism for decomposing the underlying socioeconomic forces at work. This paper presents spatial data on patterns of rural housing development in Cache County and Box Elder County, Utah. Via examination of the spatial location and quantity of rural home construction, the accuracy of traditional remote-sensing approaches to detecting exurban home development can be examined. We do this by comparing water related land use data files from 1986 and 1996 to our building permit records. Aside from exploring the differences and accuracy of alternative indicators of rural development, we will also characterize the types of landscapes that have received disproportionate amounts of new rural housing, and quantify the scale of housing construction in critical junctures in the hydrologic system.
Examining Alternative Indicators of Rural Development and Their Implications for Use in Association with More Traditional Data Sources
Eccles Conference Center
Rural land use changes are important factors worthy of consideration in any project designed to examine water quality and use. The Bear River Watershed is composed of an array of biophysical, social and economic landscapes that are all equally important to studying the dynamics of land use change and its subsequent effects on the local hydrological units. Human activities, such as the development of new rural housing, can have important impacts on watershed structures and functions. Research on human activities within ecosystems requires the collection of longitudinal data on how the rural landscape is changing over time. While traditional remote-sensing technology can document changes in land cover associated with human activity, they are an imperfect mechanism for decomposing the underlying socioeconomic forces at work. This paper presents spatial data on patterns of rural housing development in Cache County and Box Elder County, Utah. Via examination of the spatial location and quantity of rural home construction, the accuracy of traditional remote-sensing approaches to detecting exurban home development can be examined. We do this by comparing water related land use data files from 1986 and 1996 to our building permit records. Aside from exploring the differences and accuracy of alternative indicators of rural development, we will also characterize the types of landscapes that have received disproportionate amounts of new rural housing, and quantify the scale of housing construction in critical junctures in the hydrologic system.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2006/AllAbstracts/50