Impervious Surface Cover: Paved Areas in DC and Baltimore
A special algorithm has been applied to the Landsat 7 image to illuminate the changes in low-density residential land use which exemplify sprawl.
There is a link between impervious surfaces within a watershed, (here we see a subset of the Chesapeake Bay watershed area) and the water quality within the watershed. In general, once 10-15 % of an area is covered by impervious surfaces, increased sediments and chemical pollutants in runoff have a measurable effect on water quality. When 15-25% of a watershed is paved or impervious to drainage, increased runoff leads to reduced oxygen levels and impaired stream life. When more then 25% of surfaces are paved, many types of stream life die from the concentrated runoff and sediments.
In this animation the green is taken away to let the Impervious Surface Cover stand out.
A hi-res still of the Impervious Surface Cover DC and Baltimore and surrounding area.
A hi-res still of just the Impervious Surface Cover DC and Baltimore.
For More Information
See Landsat
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animator
- Stuart A. Snodgrass (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Scientist
- Andrew Smith (University of Maryland)
Release date
This page was originally published on Tuesday, June 12, 2001.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:58 PM EDT.
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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Impervious Surface Cover [Landsat-7: ETM+]
ID: 342This dataset can be found at: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/wrs.html
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.