Rationale:

• Urban sprawl - in US between 1992 and 1997 conversion of 13.7 million acres of farmland to non agricultural use.
• Approximately 50% of world’s population currently resides in urban areas (in the US this is 81%).
• Increased coverage of impervious areas linked to localized flooding and degraded water supplies.
• Urban construction site erosion, fuel spills, oil leaks, lawn chemicals, all contribute to water pollution.

Goal:

• Quantify the water quality impacts of urbanization and develop mitigating practices.

Objective:

• Compare and contrast the water quality signatures from watersheds possessing different levels of agricultural and urban landuse.

• Hydrology and water quality samples are collected from watersheds each having different levels of agricultural, urban, and wooded landuse.

Findings:

• 5-years of hydrology and water quality data have been collected from multiple subwatersheds of UBWC possessing varying amounts of urban, agricultural, and wooded landuse.

Objective:

• Capture the watershed water quality changes stemming from conversion of agricultural land to urbanization.

Approach:

• Collect hydrology and water quality data from a subwatershed within UBWC watershed that is currently being converted from an agricultural watershed to urban golf course community.

• 5 years of water quality and hydrology data collected in a subwatershed of UBWC.
• Particular watershed is undergoing transition from agricultural landuse to urban/turf landuse.
• Golf course is currently operational and plans have been approved for housing development.

Objective:

• Relate hydrology and water quality findings to impervious areas within identified subwatersheds of UBWC.

Approach:

• Utilize aerial imagery to develop temporal impervious indices and relate those indices to measured hydrology and water quality.

• Impervious areas from aerial imagery in 1994, 2006, and 2008 have been quantified for select subwatersheds within UBWC.