Assessing sustainable land-use practices using geographic information systems
Abstract
Many prominent scientists have claimed that we need to develop environmentally sustainable practices otherwise societies may collapse. The use of Geographic Information Systems allows detailed studies that can cross disciplinary boundaries and lead to quantifiable statements as to the change of land use practices that took place in the past and those that may occur in the future. This dissertation focuses on two research topics. One that attempts to quantify the environmental consequences of parking lots located in the Midwest, USA. The other research topic focuses on the land area needed to support ethanol in the United States. In Tippecanoe County, Indiana, it was determined that parking lots occupied approximately 6.6% of the urban areas, that the area devoted to parking lots exceeded the area devoted to urban parks by a factor of 3, and that these parking lots contributed to increased runoff of pollutants. The parking lots of Tippecanoe County were estimated to be responsible for 46.5 thousand pounds of oil and grease released annually in runoff, as well as an increase of 240.6 thousand pounds of suspended solids, and 65.7 pounds of lead released when compared to pre-development conditions. A method that scales up the county wide study was also developed to determine the areal footprint of parking lots with the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. It was estimated that these four states allocate approximately 1260 square km of their land to parking lots and that this accounts for 4.97% of urban land use and over 43 million parking spaces, whereas the number of individuals in age of driving (adults over 18 years old) amounted to just over 25 million. Within the four states studied, states where urban sprawl was considered more prevalent were also states that had a higher proportion of their urban land devoted to parking lots. The second dissertation topic focused on using GIS to locate suitable sites for corn or cellulosic based ethanol production facilities. Since a valuable byproduct of corn ethanol production is Distiller’s Grain Solubles (DGS), siting of ethanol plants was considered with regard to both corn production by county within the conterminous United States and head of cattle available to use this output as feed. We found that many counties outside the Midwest could sustain smaller sized ethanol plants, especially when considering that most large production facilities need to redistribute their DGS in dried form sometimes as far as California which has negative impacts on the Net Energy Value of corn based ethanol. The future of ethanol expansion however lies with cellulosic feedstock which is bulkier and thus more costly to transport than corn. Our results indicate that cellulosic ethanol plants should be smaller in capacity, especially when compared to corn ethanol plants where 100 million gallons a year (mgy) plants are more the norm. Only 7 out of 3109 counties in the conterminous United States contain enough wood, switchgrass or crop residue feedstock to sustain plants that produce greater than 40 mgy of biofuel, meaning that larger plants would need to import feedstock from considerable distances and thus incur greater feedstock transport costs. The last section explored co-location options for siting lignocellulosic ethanol plant production facilities.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Pijanowski, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Land Use Planning|Sustainability|Environmental science|Remote sensing
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