Land Use Dynamics in the Delaware River Basin

Elaine Langone Center, Forum

The Delaware River Basin is an important region that hosts more than 8.2 million residents and provides ecosystem services that support multiple commercial, industrial, recreational and residential uses. The purpose of the project is to provide useful tools to decision makers across the 43 counties that intersect the basin in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. The tools include: a) a high-resolution (1m) LiDAR-based land cover dataset for all 43 counties that cover, in whole or in part, the basin; b) geoprocessing tools for evaluating and visualizing alternate scenarios of future land cover changes; and c) a feasibility study that gauges the willingness and abilities of stakeholder groups to participate in a long-term monitoring program. This project is one of many funded by the William Penn Foundation to develop tools and on-the-ground projects in support of Basin-wide water quality restoration and protection. In this paper we will describe our overall project, which includes collaborations with the University of Vermont and the USGS, as well as what we have learned so far regarding land use dynamics in the Basin.