Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Land use--Planning--Technological innovations; Land use--Iowa--Black Hawk County--Planning; Land use--Planning; Iowa--Black Hawk County; Academic theses;
Abstract
Agriculture is one of the world's most important activities supporting human life. However, the rate of agricultural land conversion to non-agricultural uses around the world, and especially in the United States is on the increase. It has been asserted that over 2,965,265 acres of U.S. agriculture lands have recently been lost per year to development, which is a rate nearly two and a half times that lost due to development in the last 10 years ( 1982-1992). This is of particular concern in Iowa which is agriculturally based because the loss of small tracts of this high-valued land may have a significant impact on the state's economy. There is therefore need for land use planning through land evaluation to control this mass conversion. Lately, geospatial technologies (GST) combined with land evaluation and site assessment (LESA) have proved successful in enhancing land use planning by delivering a versatile and dynamic model to assist state policy and decision makers. The goal of the study is to create a decision support tool for agricultural land evaluation using geospatial technologies in Black Hawk County, Iowa. The county was selected as a case study because about 44% of its 368,640 acres (576 sq. miles) are devoted to agriculture. This land needs pragmatic land evaluation practices to minimize agricultural land conversion and protect prime farmland. Currently, an excel-based land evaluation and site assessment is in place, but it has a limitation of lacking a spatial context, even though land evaluation factors are spatial in nature. To achieve the goal, several land evaluation methods were analyzed, and the land evaluation and site assessment (LESA) model was selected because it is a procedure and framework intended to be refined and calibrated locally. The LESA model requires data such as up-to-date land use map, soil parameters, yield, and other non-agricultural data including roads, zoning, parcel, environmental, sewer, and township data. These data were derived from different sources such as satellite remote sensing data, Black Hawk archival data, and statistical data from the national agricultural statistics service. Finally, using GIS (ArcGIS) the data were analyzed and decision support tools were developed by customizing ArcGIS using visual basic application (VBA) program. The results of the study show that, Geospatial technologies are suitable tools for agricultural land evaluation and site assessment in Black Hawk County. It was further revealed that multi-criteria models are more feasible methods than traditionally recognized system dynamic approaches for land evaluation. It was found that Soil productivity, development potentials, and farmland, are the major factors in agricultural land evaluation and site assessment. It is also concluded from the study that creating a user interface in ArcGIS using Visual Basic Application Programming is an effective tool for integrated land evaluation and site assessment model than the current method used in Black Hawk County. However, the unavailability of data such as sewer and fire/rescue services layers required for land evaluation and site assessment has affected the effectiveness of the model. Future direction of the research will be focused on enhancing LESA by adding the economic model, and the full automation of the model.
Year of Submission
2003
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Geography
First Advisor
Ramanathan Sugumaran
Second Advisor
Tim R. Strauss
Third Advisor
Dennis E. Dahms
Date Original
2003
Object Description
1 PDF file (148 leaves)
Copyright
©2003 Elisha Jasper Dung
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Dung, Elisha Jasper, "Agricultural Land Evaluation in Black Hawk County Using Geospatial Technologies" (2003). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2527.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2527
Comments
If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.