Statement of Interests

Leonard J. Gaydos

U.S. Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Ames Research Center, 242-4
Moffett Field
CA 94035
e-mail: lgaydos@usgs.gov 
Phone:  415-604-6368 
FAX:  415-604-4680
Home Page: <http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/usgs/landtran.html>
 

Metropolitan Landscape Transformations

I have always been interested in land use change. My first geography project in college was mapping the growth of 3 medium sized cities from topographic maps. My first project with USGS was helping Jim Wray and others map land use and land use change for a selection of U.S. cities.

Several years ago as the National Mapping Division of USGS was defining its role in the U.S. Global Change Research Program, I advocated a goal of monitoring, analyzing, and predicting patterns of landscape change. I proposed a prototype study with several other scientists called Human Induced Land Transformations (HILT). Our goal was to map patterns of major land use changes at the regional scale for the last 200 years, and make predictions for the next 100 years. Our initial focus was on urbanization in the San Francisco - Sacramento region.

Our assumption was that urbanization, though the product of myriad personal decisions, could be characterized as an organic process that responds to simple parameters and factors such as availability of land, topography, transportation, and existing settlement pattern. We sought a model that would approximate urbanization in a region as it might be seen from a vantage point in space over several decades.

Those requirements led to collaboration with Keith Clarke who was currently serving on the headquarters staff of USGS National Mapping Division. Keith had previously worked on a wildfire model while at NASA Ames the previous two summers. That modeling, based on cellular automata, had a rich heritage, including applications to urban growth by Batty and Longley.

To parameterize the model, colleagues William Acevedo and Cindy Bell constructed a temporal urban mapping database for San Francisco - Sacramento based on interpretations of Landsat, topographic maps, and other data. Those data formed the basis for popular animations of past growth patterns (mpeg file) that were well received by the media in the San Francisco region.

A second database was constructed by William Acevedo, Janis Buchanan, Tim Foresman, Janet Tilley, Susan Clark, and others for the Washington-Baltimore region.

Land use change is a process of immense interest to scientists, policymakers, and the public. Based on the success of HILT, USGS is now exploring the potential of a Metropolitan Landscape Transformations initiative:

At the turn of the century, America has become a metropolitan nation. Productive farmlands, wetlands, forests, and deserts that formed the America of 1900 have been transformed during the past 100 years into housing and employment for approximately 275 million Americans by 2000. The objective of Metropolitan Landscape Transformations is to trace these alterations to the American landscape over the past 100 years, compiling and reviewing the record of land use change and its many impacts, and to anticipate the changes to come in the next 100 years. Models of land use change will be used to predict future metropolitan growth and its impacts, based on current and anticipated trends. This will give policy makers, scientists and the public the "future maps" upon which to begin a dialogue on the kind of American landscape we want in the years to come.

At this workshop I am interested in learning about the state-of-the-art in land use modeling and how we may form partnerships to advance this exciting research.

Looking forward to meeting you all and having a great meeting.