DETERMINING IMPACT OF URBANIZATION ON SURFACE WATER

QUALITY IN THE PINELANDS NATIONAL RESERVE

I. Background Information

The Pinelands region is located in southern New Jersey, between the South
Jersey Shore and the suburbs of the metropolitan Philadelphia/Camden area. The
New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve contains approximately 1,100,000 acres of
land, and occupies 22% of New Jersey's land area, including territory of seven
counties (Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and
Ocean). The region dominates much of New Jersey's coastal plain and it lies on
approximately 17 trillion gallons of unusually clean water (Kirkwood – Cohancey
Aquifer). The Pinelands are a very fragile ecosystem. Pinelands water bodies are
extremely sensitive to human influences from housing developments, agricultural
activities, septic systems, landfills, and the application of fertilizers and pesticides.
Urban development alters the hydrology, habitat, and water quality of streams. The
Pinelands municipalities have grown more quickly than the Non-Pinelands
municipalities adding 28,400 residents for an increase of 4.6%. Sixteen percent of
New Jersey's total population increase between 2000 and 2002 occurred in the
Pinelands.
The aim of this project is to show the relationship between urban growth and
surface water quality. I decided to look into the land use changes that have
occurred in the ecologically sensitive area of the Pinelands for over a 20 year
period of time (1986 – 2017) focusing on parcels that have been converted to
Urban areas and which were previously part of either agriculture, forest or
wetlands areas. The goal is to investigate if those changes in land use have led to
worsening in surface water quality in that area.
My hypothesis is that the rapid land conversion to urban is negatively
influencing the water quality in the Pinelands. If water quality is degraded by
increased urbanization, this would inevitably lead to threats to the rich variety of
plant and animal life that has attracted world-wide attention. I assume that I would
be able to prove my hypothesis using the available datasets for water quality in
New Jersey and the land use data, available online. I expect to see higher values of
water pH near areas of active development as well as poor/fair water impairment
scores and low number of aquatic species in the same areas.
 II. Potential Data Sources.

In this analysis I’ll make use of the following datasets:

1. Pinelands Boundaries, Pinelands Management Areas: https://njogis-
newjersey.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/011a75f8dbe048c197bb37edea3261
15_9
2. Land Use Shape files for New Jersey in the following years: 1986, 1995,
2002, 2007, 2012, and 2015. Land Use Files are available on:
https://www.nj.gov/dep/gis/listall.html.
3. Pinelands Wide Water Quality Sites with Data,
Pinelands Wide Anuran Sites With Data,
Pinelands Wide Fish Sites with Data, available, on:
http://nj.gov/pinelands/science/complete/watershed/index.shtml.
4. Ambient Biomonitoring Network (AMNET) of New Jersey, available on:
https://njogis-
newjersey.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/d8937d8a49064467876d80e0c58a0
d6a_13
5. Private Well Testing Act Summary Results Within 2 mile by 2 mile Grids for
New Jersey:
https://gisdata-njdep.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/private-well-testing-act-
summary-results-within-2-mile-by-2-mile-grids-for-new-jersey.

All datasets will be clipped to the study area: boundaries of the Pinelands.

III. Planned Methods:

I will attempt to prove my hypothesis using the following methods:

1. In the first step of analysis I will use the Land Use datasets to extract parcels
that meet the following conditions:

a) Urban during the current year;

b) Part of either: Forest, Wetlands or Agriculture in the previous
period.

This would be achieved by using Query Builder, Select by Attribute Tool

and Extract Selected features to a new feature class.
 2. I will then merge the new feature classes into one layer, which would create
a summary showing the total changes that have happened through the whole
period (1986-2015) and how much total land has been converted to urban at
the expense of forests, wetlands and agriculture areas.

3. The next step in the analysis is to investigate changes in the water quality. I
will use the following datasets to extract locations where degradation is
observed:
i. Pinelands Wide Water Quality Sites with Data,
ii. Pinelands Wide Anuran Sites with Data,
iii. Pinelands Wide Fish Sites with Data,
iv. Ambient Biomonitoring Network (AMNET) of New Jersey,
v. Private Well Testing Act Summary Results within 2 mile by 2
mile Grids for New Jersey.

Since most of these layers represent point data I will create buffers of a 2km
distance around them in order to be able to investigate their relationship with
land use changes.

4. Once the areas with surface water degradation have been isolated I will then
continue to perform a percent overlap analysis between Land Use Change
and Each dataset to investigate what percentage of the areas with observed
water problems overlaps with areas with higher urban growth. I will create a
model builder that will automate the process and add the necessary summary
fields to the attribute tables needed for calculation.

IV. Expected Results.

I expect to observe that urban areas have been taking over forests, wetlands and
agriculture during the study period of 20 years. I suspect that urban growth is
happening not only in the areas designated for growth but to a much greater extent,
which happens to be the main concern that the CMP (Comprehensive Management
Plan, developed by The New Jersey Pinelands Commission) was trying to address.
I suppose that there is a positive correlation between Urbanization and Degradation
of surface water quality. I expect to observe higher pH, poor/fair water impairment
scores as well as lower number of anuran and fish species in areas of urban growth.
I presume that private well testing summary values will show serious degradation
of water quality in areas with development. This would be a result of increased
human activities, increased number of connecting roads, housing developments,
agricultural activities, septic systems, landfills, and the application of fertilizers
and pesticides.

However, since the CMP only channels growth to specific areas (Regional
Growth Areas within the Protection Areas) while leaving the majority of the
Pinelands (Preservation Areas) undeveloped, this may influence the rate of
degradation.