Spatiotemporal dynamics of land surface parameters in the Red River of the North Basin

The movement and distribution of water in the hydrologic cycle is affected by the level and type of land surface parameters. Thus accurate representation of the physical and biological features of the landscape within a watershed is required. A strong link exists between climate variability and the resulting changes in such land surface parameters as energy, land-cover and surface microclimates. Imagery from Landsat and other satellites provide land-cover and surface microclimate information with high temporal and spatial accuracy. This paper utilizes the land surface temperature (LST) derived from the thermal band of Landsat images and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from its red and near-infrared bands to further improve land-cover and surface microclimate mapping. Remotely-sensed spatially distributed surface latent and sensible heat fluxes were also estimated. The study was conducted on 10,200 km 2 watershed area of the Red River of the North Basin, North Dakota/Minnesota. Over the period of 1974–2002, seven images from Landsat Multispectral Scanner, Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus sensors were used. Landsat images were processed using an unsupervised classification. Corrected LST and NDVI, which indicate a strong relationship with the land-cover data, were identified using scattergrams. Surface microclimate parameters (fractional vegetation cover, FVC and fractional impervious surface, FIS area) were estimated and their spatial and temporal distributions determined. Surface energy fluxes (latent and sensible heat) were assessed over space and time. The results indicate that vegetation cover (FVC > 0.5) increased from 7% in 1974 to 33% in 2002 due to cropland farming in the Red River Valley and an increase in impervious areas (FIS > 0.5) (by 79% from 1974 to 2001) attributed to the growing cities in the valley for the period of study. The study also indicated an increase in sensible and latent heat fluxes from 1998 to 2002 for areas classified as developed and cropland, respectively. Hydrograph analysis of the flowat Grand Forks gauging station also indicated runoff response of the basin has increased between 1993 and 2002 with all years having percent runoff greater than 10% compared to only 35% of the years between 1974 and 1993. � 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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