Volcán Chimborazo is a glaciated stratovolcano located in the Ecuadorian Andes. Like all tropical glaciers, those of Chimborazo are highly sensitive to climate change and since 1986 have lost considerable mass due to climate change. This glacial retreat is of particular concern to the predominantly agrarian population surrounding the mountain as they depend on the mountain’s streams to irrigate their fields. In order to better understand the partitioning of these water resources on Chimborazo, a physically based hydrologic model that pairs groundwater-surface water processes is being developed by a geosciences student at the University of Minnesota. Together, we worked to incorporate land cover data into the model to account for water loss to evaporation and plant transpiration. Currently, the only available land cover and vegetation data comes from an 1983 Ecuadorian Department of Geography Map that is based off of land surveys conducted between 1976-1978.
Obviously, such outdated data is unlikely to be an accurate representation of current urban, agricultural, and native plant cover, so we created an updated classification for a more refined model of the hydrology of the region. Landsat 8 imagery, orthophotos, a DEM, and shapefiles were inputted into Trimble’s object based image analysis software eCognition and a ruleset was developed in order to extract classes relevant for the model.
