QUANTIFYING LAND USE/LAND COVER CHANGE IN THE BUSHKILL CREEK WATERSHED: A REMOTE SENSING AND GIS APPROACH

The Bushkill Creek watershed covers about 200 square kilometers in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. Land uses within the watershed include urban, rural, industrial, agricultural and forest. The distribution of land cover has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, as there has been a decrease in agricultural land, for rural and urban development. This urbanization has numerous environmental effects, including run-off quality, flooding, and air quality. Researchers in the Department of Geology and the Department of Civil Engineering at Lafayette College have been studying the effects of urbanization in the Bushkill Creek watershed. These studies are trying to identify the link between urbanization, and its affects on the amount and quality of run-off to the creek. The extent to how much urbanization has occurred within the watershed has not been quantified, yet needs to be as it is one of the prime control on water quality and discharge amount. This project is designed to quantify the amount of Land Use / Land Cover change in the past 30 years. Multi-temporal Landsat imagery will be utilized to identify land use types, and to assess land use/land cover changes in the watershed over the 30-year time span. GIS coverages are also included to provide a second method of quantifying land use/land cover change.