Monitoring World-wide Urban Land Cover Changes with Aster: Preliminary Results from the Phoenix, Az Lter

Detailed remote sensing of urban environments has been limited due to the poor spatial resolution of most satellite-based instruments and low demand from city officials and scientists. As many of the world’s arid region urban centers continue to expand, the need to monitor urban land cover change and its impact on the surrounding environment becomes critical. The growth of urban ecology as an important field is evident with the awarding of the first urban Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) projects to Phoenix, AZ and Baltimore, MD last year. The Phoenix LTER project relies heavily on remote sensing data products such as vegetation, soil, and urban cover types. In mid-1999 data from the newly-launched Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer (ASTER) instrument will be acquired twice per year for 100 large urban metropolitan areas. This monitoring will concentrate on cities in arid environments that are experiencing fast growth and facing potential environmental threats. Expected products of this effort are land use change, soil/rock/vegetation maps, and urban heat island monitoring.