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Virginia Tech

Urban Erosion Potential Risk Mapping with GIS

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Federal, state and local governments are increasingly focused on the effects of development on water quality and quantity. With waterbodies being especially sensitive to certain pollutants, such as sediment and nutrients, regulations have been put in place to control the amount of pollutant that gets discharged. Sediment is a cause for concern as it originates during both rural and urban activities, and often carries other pollutants (metals, nutrients, etc.) with it. Existing erosion models focus primarily on estimating erosion from agricultural watersheds. Methods are needed to predict areas with high erosive potential (EP) in urban watersheds. Highlighting highly erosive areas in urbanized watersheds allows for the prioritization of maintenance and installation of Stormwater Control Measures (SCMs), and monitoring of sediment by municipal planners and engineers. This study utilizes commonly available geospatial layers in conjunction with a computational procedure to compute relative EP risk throughout a target urban watershed. A case study of the developed methodology was performed on a watershed in Blacksburg, VA, to generate EP risk maps. Results of the study indicate areas of erosive potential within the target watershed and provide a methodology for creating erosion potential risk maps for use by municipal planners and engineers

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Civil Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2018

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Weikmann, Amanda Maria
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Dymond, Randel L.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Young, Kevin D.
  • Hodges, Clayton Christopher

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:14130
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/81879

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Weikmann, Amanda Maria. Urban Erosion Potential Risk Mapping with GIS. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/81879