Landscape characterization describes the essential character of our surroundings. It is to understand spatial, temporal, and historic relationships of landscape. This study attempts to understand the landscape character using ancillary data. The landscape characterization should incorporate dynamic temporal aspect in it, since the landscape is constantly changing. Traditional landscape characterization efforts, including landscape suitability and capability analyses, have lacked temporal aspect in them. These methods usually used product-oriented static approaches. Unlike the traditional methods, this study suggests how to incorporate a dynamic temporal aspect into the landscape characterization. A geographic information systems (GIS) was used as a framework for the study, to implement the idea. The data source was the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). The study site was Washington Crossing Hexagon, located on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania state border. First, the landscape resources and hazards were characterized. Second, the changes in landscape were characterized. Based on the landscape resources and hazards characterization, the minimum sustainability. was estimated. From the characterization of landscape changes, the future pressure of the landscape was characterized. The findings indicated the minimum sustainability of the site will be exceeded in the near future. The elements of landscape were characterized by using GIS and ancillary data. This showed the potential for GIS and EMAP data for landscape characterization. The problem found in the study is that the data are not structured for temporal analysis, since the EMAP project for the site was the baseline study for the future EMAP. Temporal data, which must be collected frequently, include vegetation, land uses, or other human-generated elements of landscape. Because of limited data availability, the study was somewhat limited. Nevertheless, this study showed the utility of applying dynamic temporal characterization by using ancillary data and GIS.
Mintai Kim
Department of Landscape Architecture
College of Environmental Design
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: 510-642-8641
Fax: 510-643-6166
Email: mkim@ced.berkeley.edu