Meter-Scale Urban Land Cover in EPA EnviroAtlas: Data, Methods and Applications for Assessing Ecosystem Services in Urban Landscapes
Abstract
US EPA EnviroAtlas provides interactive tools and resources for exploring the benefits people receive from nature or "ecosystem goods and services". Ecosystem goods and services are critically important to human health and well-being, but they are often overlooked due to lack of information. Using EnviroAtlas, many types of users can access, view, and analyze diverse information to better understand the potential impacts of various decisions. EnviroAtlas data is available at two spatial scales: national and community. To enable meaningful analysis at the community-scale EPA has developed meter-scale urban land cover (MULC). data This high-resolution foundational data permit fine-grained analysis of ecosystem services in heterogeneous urban landscapes. Here we present the data and methods used to develop the MULC, and comment on best practices and lessons learned. We also present ecosystem service use cases that feature MULC data, including stream and road vegetative buffers, tree planting, and urban heat island reduction due to vegetation.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.H23G1650P
- Keywords:
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- 0485 Science policy;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 6329 Project evaluation;
- POLICY SCIENCES