Determining Effective Impervious Area for Urban Hydrologic Modeling
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 14, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper presents a two-step process to estimate the fraction of an urban watershed covered by a hydraulically effective impervious area. The first step applies maximum likelihood classification of fine-scale multispectral satellite imagery to derive urban land cover. The second step uses an automated macro in a geographic information system to trace the water flow path from pixels classified as impervious and subclassify them as noneffective or effective. The two steps were verified independently, with verification of the second step using idealized data. The two-step process was then tested with a small watershed study of model calibration and rooftop connectivity impact on runoff. At the watershed scale the land cover classification differences were approximately 6%, while at the pixel scale matches of 50, 60, and 83% were achieved for the rooftop, asphalt/concrete, and vegetation land covers, respectively. The effective impervious area was estimated to comprise 16% of the watershed surface, which was close to the actual value of 22%. At the pixel scale, the effective impervious area match was less accurate at 48%. Differences in both land cover and effective impervious area classification at all scales are attributed to high land surface heterogeneity, data limitations and errors, and tree canopy covering impervious surfaces. The verification tests and runoff simulations validate the method as a useful means to rapidly estimate with reasonable accuracy an essential urban hydrologic model parameter.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Alley, W. M., and Veenhuis, J. E. (1983). “Effective impervious area in urban runoff modeling.” J. Hydraul. Eng., 109(2), 313–319.
Arnold, C. L., and Gibbons, C. J. (1996). “Impervious surface coverage: The emergence of a key environmental indicator.” J. Am. Plan. Assn., 62(2), 243–258.
Bauer, M. E., Doyle, J. K., and Heinert, N. J. (2002). “Impervious surface mapping using satellite remote sensing.” Proc., Int. Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symp., Vol. 4, IGARSS, Toronto, Canada, 2334–2336.
Booth, D. B. (1990). “Stream-channel incision following drainage—Basin urbanization.” Water Resour. Bull., 26(3), 407–417.
Booth, D. B., and Jackson, C. R. (1997). “Urbanization of aquatic systems: Degradation thresholds, stormwater detection, and the limits of mitigation.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 33(5), 1077–1090.
Boyd, M. J., Bufill, M. C., and Knee, R. M. (1993). “Pervious and impervious runoff in urban catchments.” Hydrol. Sci. J., 38(6), 463–478.
Boyd, M. J., Bufill, M. C., and Knee, R. M. (1994). “Predicting pervious and impervious storm runoff from urban drainage basins.” Hydrol. Sci. J., 39(4), 321–332.
Cablk, M. E., and Minor, T. B. (2003). “Detecting and discriminating impervious cover with high-resolution IKONOS data using principal component analysis and morphological operators.” Int. J. Remote Sens., 24(23), 4627–4645.
Correa, A. C., and Adhityawarma, J. (2004). “The selection of appropriate satellite sources of impervious surface information for urban hydrology.” Proc. 2004 World Water and Environmental Resources Congress: Critical Transition in Water and Environmental Resources Management, Salt Lake City, Utah, 819–830.
Deguchi, C., and Sugio, S. (1994). “Estimations for impervious areas by the use of remote sensing imagery.” Water Sci. Technol., 29(1–2), 135–144.
Dow, C. L., and DeWalle, D. R. (2000). “Trends in evaporation and Bowen ratio on urbanizing watersheds in eastern United States.” Water Resour. Res., 36(7), 1835–1843.
Elvidge, C. D., et al. (2004). “U. S. constructed area approaches the size of Ohio.” EOS Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 85(24), 233.
Fankhauser, R. (1999). “Automatic determination of imperviousness in urban areas from digital orthophotos.” Water Sci. Technol., 39(9), 81–86.
Flanagan, M., and Civco, D. L. (2001). “Subpixel impervious surface mapping.” Proc., ASPRS/ACSM Annual Convention, St. Louis, Mo., 13.
Forster, B. C. (1980). “Urban residential ground cover using Landsat digital data.” Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 46(4), 547–558.
Galli, J. (1991). Thermal impacts associated with urbanization and stormwater management best management practices, Maryland Department of Environment, Washington, D.C.
Goetz, S. J., Wright, R. K., Smith, A. J., Zinecker, E., and Schaub, E. (2003). “IKONOS imagery for resource management: Tree cover, impervious surfaces, and riparian buffers in the mid-Atlantic region.” Remote Sens. Environ., 88, 195–208.
Grimmond, C. S. B., and Oke, T. R. (1999). “Evapotranspiration rates in urban areas.” Proc., 1999 IUGG 99, the XXII General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, Birmingham, U.K., 235–243.
Han, W. (2005). “Integrated remote sensing-GIS approach to classify total and effective impervious surfaces.” Master’s thesis, Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Harris, P. M., and Ventura, S. J. (1995). “The integration of geographic data withremotely sensed imagery to improve classification in urban area.” Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 61, 993–998.
Heaney, J. P., Huber, W. C., and Nix, S. J. (1977). “Storm water management model: Level I—Preliminary screening procedures.” EPA-600/2–76–275, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C.
Jensen, S. K., and Domingue, J. O. (1988). “Extracting topographic structure from digital elevation data for geographic information system analysis.” Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 54(11), 1593–1600.
Ji, M., and Jensen, J. R. (1999). “Effectiveness of subpixel analysis in detecting and quantifying urban imperviousness from Landsat Thematic Mapper Imagery” Geocarto Int., 14(4), 33–41.
Kauffman, G. J., Corrozi, M. B., and Vonck, K. J. (2006). “Imperviousness: A performance measure of a Delaware water resource protection area ordinance.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 42(3), 603–615.
Klein, R. (1979). “Urbanization and stream quality impairment.” Water Resour. Bull., 15(4), 948–963.
Lee, J. G., and Heaney, J. P. (2003). “Estimation of urban imperviousness and its impacts on storm water systems.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 129(5), 419–426.
Leopold, L. B. (1968). Hydrology for urban land use planning: A guidebook on the hydrologic effects of urban land use, U.S. Geological Survey Circular 554, USGS, Washington, D.C.
Lillesand, T. M., and Kiefer, R. W. (1994). Remote sensing and image interpretation, Wiley, New York.
Lopes, A., Touzi, R., and Nezry, E. (1990). “Adaptive speckle filters and scene heterogeneity.” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. (USA), 28(6), 992–1000.
Milesi, C., Elvidge, C. D., Nemani, R. R., and Running, S. W. (2003). “Assessing the impact of urban land development on net primary productivity in the Southeastern United States.” Remote Sens. Environ., 86, 401–410.
Miller, R. A. (1978). “Hydraulically effective impervious area of an urban basin, Broward County, Florida” Proc., Int. Symp. on Urban Storm Water Management, Lexington, Ky., 259–261.
Ragan, R. M., and Jackson, R. J. (1975). “Use of satellite data in urban hydrologic models.” J. Hydr. Div., 101(HY12), 1469–1475.
Ridd, M. K. (1995). “Exploring a V-I-S (vegetation-impervious surface-soil) model for urban ecosystem analysis through remote sensing: Comparative anatomy for cities.” Int. J. Remote Sens., 16(12), 2165–2185.
Rossman, L. A. (2005). Storm water management model, user’s manual, Version 5.0, EPA/600/R-05/040, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati.
Sawaya, K. E., Olmanson, L. G., Heinert, N. J., Brezonik, P. L., and Bauer, M. E. (2003). “Extending satellite remote sensing to local scales: Land and water resource monitoring using high resolution imagery.” Remote Sens. Environ., 88, 144–156.
Schueler, T. (1994). “The importance of imperviousness.” Watershed Prot. Tech., 1(3), 100–111.
Snyder, M. N., Goetz, S. J., and Wright, R. K. (2005). “Stream health rankings predicted by satellite derived land cover metrics.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 41(3), 659–677.
Stankowski, S. J. (1972). “Population density as an indirect indicator of urban and suburban land-surface modifications.” U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 800-B, USGS, Washington, D.C., B219-B224.
Sutherland, R. C. (1995). “Methods for estimating the effective impervious area of urban watersheds.” Watershed Prot. Tech., 2(1), 193–195.
Wright, L. T., and Heaney, J. P. (2001). “Design of distributed stormwater control and reuse systems.” Stormwater collection systems design handbook, L. W. Mays, ed., Chap. 11, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Yang, L., Huang, C., Homer, C. G., Wylie, B. K., and Coan, M. J. (2003). “An approach for mapping large-area impervious surfaces: Synergistic use of Landsat-7 ETM+ and high spatial resolution imagery.” Can. J. Remote Sens., 29(2), 230–240.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 14 • Issue 2 • February 2009
Pages: 111 - 120
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: May 7, 2007
Accepted: May 6, 2008
Published online: Feb 1, 2009
Published in print: Feb 2009
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.