Correlations of Stormwater Runoff and Quality: Urban Pavement and Property Value by Land Use at the Parcel Level in a Small Sized American City

Abstract

As the urban environment keeps growing, stormwater management programs have been adopted to address unregulated nonpoint runoff and pollutants across the world. Extensive studies on stormwater runoff and quality at smaller spatial scales exist, but are rare at larger spatial scales. Using the City of Corvallis, Oregon, a small sized American city, as a test-bed, this study estimates urban stormwater runoff and quality by zoning, which specifies land uses, and by parcel, which defines land ownership using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model and high resolution land use and land cover data. The correlations between stormwater runoff volume, stormwater quality, parcel land cover sizes, and values are then analyzed and visualized in RStudio. The results indicate that stormwater runoff and quality are determined by complex biophysical processes, with strong correlations between urban spatial sizes and property values for some land uses being observed. The research results provide suggestions for low impact development applications for different land uses, and the findings in this research can be used to suggest stormwater management policy for various land uses in small sized cities.