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Consequences of Potomac Watershed Land-use and Land Cover Change Task
The Mattawoman Watershed

The Potomac Watershed has been changed by human-induced and natural processes, some of which have significant impact on ecosystem health and sustainability. Improved information and understanding about:

• the state of the land surface,
• the rates and patterns,
• causes and consequences of landscape change

The need to integrate and apply information to help understand the consequences of land surface change on

• sediment erosion and deposition,
• forest quality,
• habitat fragmentation,
• overall ecosystem and watershed health,
• and other factors operating at local and broad regional scales

The Mattawoman Study Area

The Why of this Task Geographic analysis will be used to improve understanding of how changes in the Potomac Watershed over-time have impacts well into the future and enable us to better anticipate them. Geospatial, socio-economic, land remote sensing, and other natural science data will be used to quantify landscape characteristics. Studies will be place-specific and at a range of spatial and temporal scales so that investigations provide comprehensive information needed to understand the environmental, resource, and economic consequences of landscape change. Analyses will seek to correlate land cover changes with the consequences in the Potomac Watershed.

The objective is to analyze and interpret land use dynamics, including land use and land cover change, to enhance the understanding of the physical and social drivers of land surface change. Data will be integrated for analysis. Geographic analysis will be conducted to

• help understand the impacts of topographic characteristics issues, for example sedimentation within the watershed, and
• improve the understanding of how the topographic states and changes in the uplands shape the Mattawoman watershed over time.

• quantify landscape characteristics,
• identify rates,
• and possibly hindcast past and forecast future trends of landscape change.

Studies will be place specific and done at a range of spatial and temporal scales so that investigations will provide comprehensive information that is needed to understand the environmental, resource, and economic consequences of landscape change. Analysis will seek to correlate the effects of rates and consequences of land use and cover change and other topographic characteristics on sedimentation in the Mattawoman watershed. In addition, this geographic analysis addresses EPA's mission and the Clean Water Act.

The Task's planned accomplishments, for the life of the project, will include several deliverables. Web based open file reports, publications, PowerPoint presentations, and posters will be generated. In addition, a Geospatial Database will be constructed for the Mattawoman Watershed.

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Example Presentation

This PowerPoint Presentation describes the planned FY 06 through FY10 activities used to help justify the expenditure of Geographic Analysis and Monitoring Program and Chesapeake Bay Program funds for this Task.

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Planned Publications/Deliverables

• FY06—Task WEB Home Page and PPT Presentation


• FY07—Task Poster


• FY08—Additional WEB Pages including a WEB Accessable Database


• FY09—Land Cover/land-use Trends of the Mattawoman Watershed


• FY10—Compare and Contrast Analysis of the Mattawoman Watershed to the ROMA West Branch Watershed

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