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| Air Quality Research |
| Title: | Urban Heat Island Modeling |
| Project Period: | 09/01/2004 - 02/28/2005 |
| Total Budget: | $25,000 |
| Sub-Contractors: | University of Houston - Daewon Byun ($25,000)
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The primary goal of the present research is to study how the changes in the land use (LU) and land cover (LC) impacts on the air quality in the HGA. The Unversity of Houston has conducted meteorological, emissions, and air quality sensitivity model simulations to study the effects of land use and land cover modification on the urban heat island development, on the biogenic emissions estimates and finally on the air quality in HGA. Comparative modeling simulations were performed with the 1990 and 2000 LU/LC datasets. This analysis and modeling, in a separately funded project (Texas Forest Service funding) relevant to the H17 project, funded with CIAP funds, revealed problems with the 1990 LANDSAT image interpretations for land use/land cover. This resulted in the need for reanalysis and modeling to correct this problem. 1992 land use/land cover images have been acquired for this purpose.
Specifically, the 1990 LANDSAT data showed much less vegetation and tree cover area than the 2000 LANDSAT data. The project technical team raised concerns that the 1990 LANDSAT data, which was taken in December, would not be suitable for estimating trends in the tree cover change for the HGA area. In addition, University of Houston team reported that the MM5 simulation with the 2000 LU data show abnormally high temperature distribution in the southwest part of the 4-km modeling domain due to the large areas of "barren' land use classification. Through the consultation with county officials, it was determined that the 2000 LANDSAT data was taken soon after the crops in the southwest part of the domain was harvested. The project technical team decided the following changes; (1) 1992 USGS LU/LC dataset to be used for the trend study , and (2) modification of the LU/LC dataset used for the meteorological simulation to replace the some of the barren area with the irrigated dry crop land. Subsequently, University of Houston will need to re-simulate meteorology, biogenic emissions, and air quality with the new base and projected land use data. Therefore, this addendum for the project describes the additional tasks that will be performed by the University of Houston and completion of the San Jose State University tasks with the 1-km urbanized MM5 simulations.
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| Page Updated/Reviewed: 05/24/2006 11:35 AM |
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