scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Impervious surface coverage: the emergence of a key environmental indicator

Chester L. Arnold, +1 more
- 30 Jun 1996 - 
- Vol. 62, Iss: 2, pp 243-258
TLDR
A wide range of strategies to reduce impervious surfaces and their impacts on water resources can be applied to community planning, site-level planning and design, and land use regulation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract
Planners concerned with water resource protection in urbanizing areas must deal with the adverse impacts of polluted runoff. Impervious surface coverage is a quantifiable land-use indicator that correlates closely with these impacts. Once the role and distribution of impervious coverage are understood, a wide range of strategies to reduce impervious surfaces and their impacts on water resources can be applied to community planning, site-level planning and design, and land use regulation. These strategies complement many current trends in planning, zoning, and landscape design that go beyond water pollution concerns to address the quality of life in a community.

read more

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Book ChapterDOI

Streams in the Urban Landscape

TL;DR: The most consistent and pervasive effect is an increase in impervious surface cover within urban catchments, which alters the hydrology and geomorphology of streams as discussed by the authors, which results in predictable changes in stream habitat.
Journal ArticleDOI

Comparison of impervious surface area and normalized difference vegetation index as indicators of surface urban heat island effects in Landsat imagery

TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and percent impervious surface as indicators of surface urban heat island effects in Landsat imagery by investigating the relationships between the land surface temperature (LST), Percent Impervious Surface area (%ISA), and the NDVI.
Journal ArticleDOI

Psychological benefits of greenspace increase with biodiversity

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that greenspace users can more or less accurately perceive species richness depending on the taxonomic group in question, indicating that successful management of urban greenspaces should emphasize biological complexity to enhance human well-being in addition to biodiversity conservation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Remote sensing of the urban heat island effect across biomes in the continental USA

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a spatial analysis to assess the urban heat island (UHI) skin temperature amplitude and its relationship to development intensity, size, and ecological setting for 38 of the most populous cities in the continental United States.
Journal ArticleDOI

Integrating Humans into Ecology: Opportunities and Challenges for Studying Urban Ecosystems

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that if the natural and social sciences remain within their separate domains, they cannot explain how human-dominated ecosystems emerge from interactions between humans and ecological processes.
References
More filters
Book

Water in environmental planning

TL;DR: A comprehensive review of the current literature associated with water resources can be found in this paper, but perhaps more importantly can also be used as an introductory working document in dealing with particular environmental problems.
Book

Design with nature

Ian L. McHarg
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the role of values in the survival of the world and the importance of values as a response to values in a world where values are a capsule process process.
Journal ArticleDOI

Urbanization and stream quality impairment

TL;DR: In this paper, a study was conducted in the Piedmont province of Maryland to determine if a relationship exists between stream quality and the extent of watershed urbanization, finding that the relationship between degrees of urbanization and decline in stream quality was linear as watershed area increased.
Related Papers (5)