Investigating Land Cover Change In Crow Wing County Emily Smoter and Michael Palmer Remote Sensing of Natural Resources and the Environment University of Minnesota

Investigate and quantify percent land cover change in Crow wing County from 1985 to With a special interest in the Brainerd area. Brainerd is a major tourist destination. Crow Wing County's population has increased by ~20,000 people from Brainerd's population has increased by 2,100 in the same amount of time With population increases and higher levels of tourism, we will expect to see an increase in urbanization, and overall loss of undeveloped land around Crow Wing County and the Brainerd area. Project Objective

Increased development Wildlife Habitat loss Water infiltration Concerns o Runoff due to increases in impervious surfaces Implications of High Density Urban Land Cover

Area of Interest Crow Wing County Minnesota 1157 sq/miles

Landsat Imagery Acquired from USGS GloVis Landsat 5 TM False Color IR Aug 2006 Landsat 4 TM False Color IR Aug 1985

Crow Wing County Vector Layer County Vector Image from MNGEO Clipped and geo referenced

Land Cover Classification 8 Classes 1.Water 2.Wetland 3.Forest 4.Low Density Forest 5.Pasture/Grassland 6.Low Density Rural/Agriculture 7.Medium Density 8.Urban/High Density Development

Classifying Land Cover in ERDAS Imagine 1985 Unsupervised Classification2006 Unsupervised Classification

Accuracy Assessment Overall Accuracy: % Kappa Statistic: 0.724

Limits of Classification

Comparison and Analysis Comparing Percent Change in Cover Type Class from 1985 to 2006

Conclusion Analysis of land cover change confirmed that high density development increased by 138 percent. High density development increased around large lakes Density of Brainerd & surrounding area increased Agriculture, grassland, and low density rural decreased

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