Estimating the impact of urbanization on LAI and fPAR in the Baltimore–Washington corridor area

Abstract

During the past 20 years the Baltimore–Washington corridor area has exhibited many classic characteristics of urbanization, including the loss of natural resources, landscape fragmentation, and declines in water quality. In this research, we estimated the impact of urbanization on leaf area index (LAI) and the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR) absorbed by vegetation in the Baltimore–Washington corridor area. Multitemporal LAI and fPAR images were acquired using Landsat thematic mapper (TM) images from 1986 to 2004. The impact of urbanization on the vegetation productivity was further analyzed based on the changes of LAI and fPAR in different zoning areas between 1986 and 2004. The overlaid results of zoning, census data, and LAI and fPAR images proved that the productivity of urban greenness was greatly impacted by the urbanization when more human activities were involved. The image-based LAI and fPAR coupled with GIS zoning and census data proved their unique values in assessing the impact of urbanization on urban greenness.