Sediment Pollution Assessment of Abandoned Developments Using Remote Sensing and GIS.

The current economic crisis has left numerous residential developments in the Southeastern United States in various states of construction. Evidence suggests that many of these development sites are currently graded and essentially abandoned creating a major source of sediment runoff to waterways. Residential development locations with significant bare soil areas were identified through classification of Landsat 5 TM satellite imagery and subsequently verified from high-resolution county aerial photographs. The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was used in a GIS to estimate the potential magnitude of erosion from each identified location assuming the worst case scenario of a completely unmaintained site and combined with hydrography data to assess risk of sediment entering nearby streams. A random selection of sites was visited and assessed using GPS and a mobile GIS to validate our findings. Preliminary GIS results indicate 301 sites with a total bare soil area of 2,378 hectares over three counties in upstate South Carolina.