Land cover change in Puget Sound urbanizing watersheds

Monitoring landscape change is critical to better understand urbanization impacts on ecosystems. Remote sensing and geo-referenced socio-economic data provide powerful tools for documenting changes in the landscape and developing strategies to minimize the effects of urban development on natural habitats. The interpretation and analysis of urban land cover change from remotely sensed images however present unique challenges due to the spatial and spectral heterogeneity of the urban landscape. Combining remote sensed data with socio-economic data sources adds complexity to the task of detecting and interpreting change. In this paper we developed a methodology to interpret and assess land cover change between 1991 and 1999 in Puget Sound Water Resource Inventory Areas (WRIA), Washington, USA. We use US Census data from 1990 and 2000 to infer relationships between population growth and land cover change. Integrating these sources of data proved useful to assess the relationships between population and land cover change.