HPCCprojects:Dynamic Coupling of the Water Cycle with Patterns of Urban Growth
Dynamic Coupling of the Water Cycle with Patterns of Urban Growth
Project description
The objective of this project is to link an urban growth model (SLEUTH) with a fully-coupled, physically-based three-dimensional hydrologic model (PARFLOW-CLM) to evaluate the effects of growth on water availability and limits to water supply using the Baltimore metropolitan region as a case study. The urban growth modeling consists of a rigorous and fully validated implementation of the SLEUTH model coupled with a spatial statistical model of urban suitability and demographic data. This approach defines a suitability map for urban land cover based on the conditions that are associated with current urban land and areas of recent urban land cover change. Landscape variables, such as soil suitability and non-urban land cover (e.g. forest and agriculture) are used to define appropriate conditions for urbanization. Socio-economic variables, including lands that are protected through regulatory policies or parks, population density, and others, are also included. In addition to providing a platform where both landscape characteristics and socio-economic variables can be integrated, this model provides the opportunity to test and quantify the influence of each of these variables in either attracting or resisting development. Implementation of the hydrologic component of the project includes intensive field studies at the local scale that will focus on a single highly urbanized watershed, Dead Run, which is a tributary to the Gwynns Falls, the primary study watershed of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study NSF-funded long-term ecological research site. Detailed process studies will be carried out in conjunction with application of the EPA SWMM model to achieve an integrated understanding of controls on water stores and fluxes at the subwatershed scale in a highly urbanized area. Subwatershed fine-scale modeling results results will then be used to determine large-scale effective properties as inputs to PARFLOW CLM of the entire metropolitan region. Combining a physically-based regional hydrologic model with an urban growth model will allow an assessment of the coupled feedbacks between growth projections (and the socio-economic variables that affect growth) and surface and subsurface water resources. Changes in stream baseflow and groundwater availability may in turn influence regulatory decisions on development permits in exurban areas.
Objectives
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Time-line
9/1/07 - 8/31/12
Models in use
Results
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Funding
National Science Foundation, Biocomplexity of Coupled Natural and Human Systems
