Land Cover Change - Using NDVI

During my pre- and early teen years, I would sometimes accompany my father as he drove across the Los Angeles basin on business. The typical trip went from the far northeast corner of Los Angeles to the west side near Santa Monica. Many of the freeways that are so used and crowded today did not yet exist. As we travelled city streets he often remarked that this or that office building had not been there twenty years earlier; it had been a coffee shop or a strawberry field or simply an empty lot. I remember thinking how unique to have memory of the area reaching that far back. As my own children were growing up, I found myself similarly remarking about changes in our area over the previous twenty years. Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c.500 BCE) is credited with the saying, 'Nothing endures but change.' In other words, the only constant in the universe is change. Just how has the area in which we live changed over a generation or more? Is there more or less vegetation? Has the number or type of buildings changed? Are there new streets and highways? How is the land being used? How do changes in land use affect the human population and the overall health of the planet? How do human activities and choices affect the quality and type of land cover? Can land cover and land use be measured on a large scale? Are such changes related in any way to global climate change? This lesson will introduce the learner to normalized difference vegetative index imagery. The learner will access and analyze multispectral satellite imagery especially prepared to indicate the amount and productivity of vegetative land cover and thus follow changes over a number of years.

Next Generation Science Standards addressed in this lesson:
    HS-PS4-5-A     HS-PS4-5-C     HS-LS2-2     HS-ESS3-1