UNDERGRADUATE LAND COVER/LAND USE MAPPING PROJECT, MOBILE BAY, ALABAMA

Nine Middle Tennessee State University Geosciences undergraduates mapped the land cover/land use (LCLU) of a 915 km² (226 thousand acre) area on the southeast side of Mobile Bay, Alabama during 2011. The map area includes seven HUC12 watersheds within the Mobile Bay Basin and seven watersheds within the Perdido Bay-Wolf Bay Basin. Communities within the study area include Gulf Shores, Foley, and Daphne, Alabama. The undergraduates investigated LCLU at 455 sites within the map area, examining all of the sites on orthophotos and visiting most on the ground during early March, 2011. The undergraduates created a LCLU map by applying unsupervised and supervised classification to a late 2010 Landsat scene. To improve their map, the undergraduates used information from the Census 2010 TIGER/Line road map. The undergraduate LCLU map has five classes: open water, developed land, barren land, forest (including forested wetland), and pasture and cultivated crops. The LCLU map has an overall accuracy of approximately 76% based on comparison with orthophotos at 210 stratified random sites. The undergraduates will compare their map with older LCLU maps to better-understand urban growth.