Landscape Analysis of New York City's Water Supply (1973-1998).

摘要

Currently the city of New York is trying to save taxpayers the cost of a billion dollar filtration system by protecting water quality through implementing a long-range watershed protection program. The goals of this study are (1) improvements in environmental risk assessment and (2) target watersheds and sub-watersheds influencing water quality in New York City's water supply system. In this study, land use imagery will be acquired or generated for four dates, ranging from 1973 to 1998. In order to better determine landscape change over a 25 year time span further evaluation of the multi-date and multi-resolution data sets will be conducted using pared Landsat TM and MSS imagery for one of four selected image dates. Physical, chemical, biological water data will be collected from various database sources for the 70's 80's and 90's for streams and reservoirs. The main sources for the water quality parameters will be the NYCDEP, NYSDEC, USGS and EPA's EMAP and storage and retrieval analyses to examine yearly and seasonal change in water quality and (2) stepwise regression, correlations and cluster analysis to find associations and relationships between land-use with water quality parameters. From these analyses an expanded knowledge of the impacts of landscape proportion on water quality will be gained, and a set of landscape metrics important to surface water quality conditions will be calculated. This study is consistent with the goals and objective of improved understanding of environmental risk, ecosystem research, assessment and restoration, as articulate by the 10 year strategic plan for the landscape science program (LEB Strategic Plan).