Land Use

Development Scenarios

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Land Use

Land use issues that QAR, Inc. can help you address, include: land use change; conflicts with existing land use plans, policies, and controls; land use incompatibility; urban sprawl; encroachment on agricultural land, particularly prime farmlands, and sensitive lands; and, land cover change, particularly cover change that leads to an increase in impervious surfaces in watersheds. 

Examples of recent land use analyses conducted, includes:

Technical Consultant – Coastal Mississippi EIS.  This EIS was a hybrid document with a scope that departed in several notable ways from a traditional NEPA analysis.  Its scope was twofold: (1) to provide a comprehensive analysis of recent and reasonably foreseeable development trends and associated environmental conditions, and (2) to consider the effects of putting into place a tailored method for evaluating cumulative effects in environmental impact evaluations associated with future permit applications for large-scale developments in coastal Mississippi, on an individual subwatershed basis.

The land use analysis involved: (1) establishing the baseline land cover from Landsat thematic satellite imagery and translating the imagery into a GIS layer using the NLCD Land Cover Classification System; (2) estimating land consumption rates and shifts in land cover over time; (3) defining growth scenarios to be evaluated in the trends analysis (slow growth, status quo, and high growth); (4) establishing land consumption rates for each growth senario; (5) simulating the percentage land cover types for individual subwatersheds based on baseline land coverages, historical growth trends, and land consumption rates. 

The objective was not to project that actual location of specific land cover types, but only to assess the percent change in land cover types in a watershed. The percentages provided sufficient data for conducting loadings modeling and assessing impacts on specific resources, such as wetlands and water resources, and for assessing impacts from changes in impervious cover.  To Tetra Tech, Inc., Fairfax, VA for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, Mobile, AL – 2000-02.

Technical Consultant, Operation and Maintenance of Lake Sidney Lanier EIS.  Land use/land cover analysis involved assessing land use/land cover changes associated with different boat dock permit scenarios derived from alternative shoreline management plans.  Analysis involved assessing land use/land cover changes on the lake’s shoreline, adjacent private lands, and in local watersheds from the indirect and induced employment and population growth in the surrounding communities stimulated by additional boat dock permits.  To Tetra Tech, Inc., Fairfax, VA for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, AL – 2001-02.

Technical Consultant, Greers Ferry Lake Shoreline Management Plan EIS.  Land use/land cover analysis involved assessing land use/land cover changes associated with different boat dock permit scenarios derived from alternative shoreline management plans.  Analysis involved assessing land use/land cover changes on the lake’s shoreline, adjacent private lands, and in local watersheds from the indirect and induced employment and population growth in the surrounding communities stimulated by additional boat dock permits.  To Tetra Tech, Inc., Fairfax, VA for US Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock, AR – 2001-02.

Project Manager/Technical Director, Women’s Prison and Intake Center EA. Project involved assessing the land use impacts of building and operating a 1,600 bed Women’s Corrections Facility on a 108 acre site in Wilsonville, OR, comprised of 14 separate properties with different zoning designations. Assessment included a determination of the potential to conflict with local land use plans, policies and controls, particularly compliance with Washington County’s Community Development Code and related ordinances, and compliance with the county’s development review process.  For Coles Environmental Consulting, Inc., West Linn, OR for Oregon Department of Corrections, Salem, OR  - 1999-00.