Accuracy assessment of NLCD 2011 impervious cover data for the Chesapeake Bay region, USA

Wickham, James D.; Herold, Nate; Stehman, Stephen V.; Homer, Collin G.; Xian, George; Claggett, Peter R.

doi:10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2018.09.010

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Wickham et al [13] suggested that the ideal assessment of NLCD products would require estimation of percent impervious surface for every 30-m pixel based on NAIP imagery, but they had to use a more limited, indirect method because the cost to obtain such ideal reference data was prohibitive. Although a national assessment on the NLCD imperviousness product has not been reported, a recent pilot study in the Chesapeake Bay region has demonstrated the promising value of using NAIP imagery as reference data [44]. The demand of substantial human intervention in generating pixel-level, full-coverage reference data for impervious surface is a major obstacle for the continuous development and validation of NLCD products and similar medium-resolution satellite-derived datasets in other countries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Impervious Surface from Aerial Imagery Using Semi-Automatic Sampling and Spectral Stability

2020

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The quantification of impervious surface through remote sensing provides critical information for urban planning and environmental management. The acquisition of quality reference data and the selection of effective predictor variables are two factors that contribute to the low accuracies of impervious surface in urban remote sensing. A hybrid method was developed to improve the extraction of impervious surface from high-resolution aerial imagery. This method integrates ancillary datasets from OpenStreetMap, National Wetland Inventory, and National Cropland Data to generate training and validation samples in a semi-automatic manner, significantly reducing the effort of visual interpretation and manual labeling. Satellite-derived surface reflectance stability is incorporated to improve the separation of impervious surface from other land cover classes. This method was applied to 1-m National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery of three sites with different levels of land development and data availability. Results indicate improved extractions of impervious surface with user’s accuracies ranging from 69% to 90% and producer’s accuracies from 88% to 95%. The results were compared to the 30-m percent impervious surface data of the National Land Cover Database, demonstrating the potential of this method to validate and complement satellite-derived medium-resolution datasets of urban land cover and land use.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Impervious Surface from Aerial Imagery Using Semi-Automatic Sampling and Spectral Stability

2020

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“…Fourth, while we used the most comprehensive 30 m NLCD fractional imperviousness data [59,60] available for estimating impervious footprints, Nowak and Greenfield [83] found that 2001 percent impervious cover was underestimated by 1.4% to 5.7% in approximately 70% of mapping zones of the conterminous U.S. More recently, comparisons of the 2011 imperviousness data to high-resolution (1 m 2 ) reference data for the Chesapeake Bay region [84] and for 18 U.S. metropolitan regions [85] identified similar underestimation biases in the percent impervious cover. Smith et al [86] evaluated NLCD impervious data for hydrologic applications across exurban to urban settings, and, compared to reference data, found greater underestimation bias in areas of low-density development (<20% impervious cover), mixed accuracy across medium-density development (40-70% impervious), and the highest agreement in areas of higher-density developments (>70% impervious).…”

Section: Comments On Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in United States Human Footprint Revealed by New Spatial Metrics of Urbanization and Per Capita Land Change

Vogler

Vukomanovic

2021

Sustainability

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Accelerations in population growth and urban expansion are transforming landscapes worldwide and represent a major sustainability challenge. In the United States, land conversion to impervious surfaces has outpaced population increases, yet there are few spatial metrics of urbanization and per capita land change available nationwide for assessing local to regional trends in human footprint. We quantified changes (2000–2010) in housing density, imperviousness, per capita land consumption, and land-use efficiency for block groups of the contiguous U.S. and examined national patterns and variation in these metrics along the urban–rural gradient and by megaregion. Growth in housing (+13.6%) and impervious development (+10.7%) resulted in losses of rural lands, primarily due to exurbanization and suburbanization. Mean per capita consumption increased in all density classes but was over 8.5 times greater in rural lands than in exurban, suburban, and urban areas. Urban and suburban areas had significantly lower mean consumption, yet change was unsustainable in 60% of these areas. Megaregions across the sprawling Sun Belt, spanning from Arizona to North Carolina, grew most unsustainably, especially compared to regions in the Pacific Northwest and Front Range. This work establishes 21st-century benchmarks that decision-makers can use to track local and regional per capita land change and sustainable growth in the U.S.; however, these metrics of the form, extent, rate, and efficiency of urbanization can be applied anywhere concurrent built-up area and population data are available over time. Our web mapping application allows anyone to explore spatial and temporal trends in human footprint and download metrics, and it is designed to be easily updatable with future releases of validated developed land cover, protected areas, and decennial Census data.

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“…Translating recent quantitative estimates of the spatial pattern of land cover change accuracy (Wickham, Stehman, et al 2018) to the expression of land cover change in our stream confluence dataset indicates that accuracy should increase as the difference between 2001 and 2011 proportions increases. Availability of higher resolution land cover is becoming more widespread (Popkin 2018; http://www.chesapeakeconservancy.org; http://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas), and comparison of NLCD with such data indicates higher resolution data would yield different area estimates and different spatial patterns but these high‐resolution datasets are not without error (Wickham, Herold, et al 2018; Wickham et al 2020; Wickham and Riitters 2019).…”

Section: Date Availability and Data Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Landscape Assessment and Associated Dataset of Stream Confluences for the Conterminous U.S.

Ebert

Wickham

Neale

et al. 2020

J American Water Resour Assoc

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Stream confluences are important components of fluvial networks. Hydraulic forces meeting at stream confluences often produce changes in streambed morphology and sediment distribution. These changes often increase habitat heterogeneity relative to upstream and downstream locations, which have led some to identify them as biological hotspots. Despite their potential ecological importance, there are relatively few empirical studies documenting ecological patterns upstream and downstream of confluences. We have produced a publicly available dataset of stream confluences and associated watershed attributes for the conterminous United States. The dataset includes 1,085,629 stream confluences and 383 attributes for each confluence organized into 15 dataset tables for both tributary and mainstem upstream catchments and watersheds. Themes in the dataset include hydrology (e.g., stream order), land cover, land cover change, geology (e.g., calcium content of underlying lithosphere), physical condition (e.g., precipitation), measures of ecological integrity, and stressors (e.g., impaired streams). Additionally, we used measures of ecological integrity to assess the condition of the stream confluences. Aside from a generally positive east‐to‐west gradient in ecological condition, we found that approximately one‐third of the confluences had markedly contrasting ecological conditions between mainstem and tributary, catchment and watershed, or both. The dataset should support many, multifaceted studies of stream confluence ecology.

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Accuracy assessment of NLCD 2011 impervious cover data for the Chesapeake Bay region, USA

Cited by 5 publications

References 37 publications

Extracting Impervious Surface from Aerial Imagery Using Semi-Automatic Sampling and Spectral Stability

Extracting Impervious Surface from Aerial Imagery Using Semi-Automatic Sampling and Spectral Stability

Trends in United States Human Footprint Revealed by New Spatial Metrics of Urbanization and Per Capita Land Change

A Landscape Assessment and Associated Dataset of Stream Confluences for the Conterminous U.S.

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