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LULC Change From-To Classes for: Modeling Future Land Cover and Water Quality Change in Minneapolis, MN, USA to Support Drinking Water Source Protection Decisions

Published by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2023-03-03T00:00:00.000+00:00
We developed four 2011-2050 land cover change scenarios and modeled the impact of projected land cover change on influent water quality to support long-term planning for the city of Minneapolis, MN. Baseline land cover was from the NLCD2011 database. IPCC SRES scenarios (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/sres-en.pdf) interpreted by Sohl et al. (2014) (https://doi.org/10.1890/13-1245.1) for the conterminous United States were downscaled from 250 meters to 30 meters. The baseline and scenario land cover data were used as input into the Soil Water and Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to assess the effect of outyear projected land cover change on the source of raw water for the city of Minneapolis, MN. SWAT was used to assess the effect of land cover change on raw water concentrations/loads of sediment, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus. The IPCC SRES evaluated were A1B, A2, B1, and B2. The four scenarios were implemented with (A1Bf) and without (A1B) forest recovery (e.g., conversion of cropland (2011) to forest (2050)).

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