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Anacostia - LID Retrofit and Restoration Study for Urban Areas
Project Flier |
Map Products
This work was supported by a Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grant awarded by the
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to the Low Impact Development Center, Inc.
The Center is a non-profit 501(c)(3) water resources research organization aimed
at balancing growth and environmental integrity through the advancement of Low
Impact Development (LID) technology.
Funds from this grant will be used to help develop a model planning process for
retrofitting and restoring hydrologic functions in impaired urban watersheds
using the principles of Low Impact Development (LID). The project is a
partnership between the LID Center and the District of Columbia Office of
Planning who will assist in identifying and developing planning options. The
planning process will focus on the use of high technology tools such as
remote
sensing and GIS to:
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analyze impaired watersheds that have the
potential to be restored using LID approaches and
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target areas for implementation of these
retrofit and restoration practices.
The project will use Landsat multi-spectral satellite imagery contributed by the
Mid-Atlantic RESAC to assess a watershed’s environmental conditions. Maps of
various ecological parameters can be derived from the remote imagery, including
soil moisture, vegetation coverage, surface temperature, impervious surfaces,
evapotranspiration, and land use. This imagery and its products will be used to
develop a watershed scale planning process for identifying and targeting
ecologically impacted areas for potential LID retrofit or restoration. These
could be areas of compacted soils, degraded vegetation, extensive
imperviousness, exposed sediment, and/or disconnected riparian buffers. The
process will also indicate how GIS overlays can be used with these parameters in
order to identify landowners, homeowners associations, and stakeholders that
could be potential partners in the restoration or retrofit of these areas.
Some examples of the process include the identification of compacted soils that
could then receive LID restoration amendments, providing increased infiltration
of rainfall, reduced thermal pollution, and enhanced stream buffering. Other
areas that are targeted as urban retrofit regions could receive microscale
vegetation treatment, such as rain gardens, which filter polluted runoff,
protect local soils, reduce runoff volume, and cool local climates.
The District of Columbia and the Anacostia Watershed will serve as the study
area in developing the prototype planning process. The techniques and
information developed from this project can then be transferred and applied to
other urban areas in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The use of such LID-based
tools will serve as one of the key strategies in helping communities meet water
quality goals in the 21st century.
The initial phase of this project has been completed. Future goals include
developing and refining protocols for using this technology as a broad and
comprehensive watershed management screening tool.
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Map Products
Note that all of these map products are intended only as initial examples of the
remote sensing techniques. Use of these maps for actual policy or planning
purposes would require more detailed, site-specific analyses along with accuracy
assessments.
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