Riparian Buffer Analysis

A while ago I wrote about buffer zones, water quality, and agriculture. This is a quick update on that. I've been working on a research project that looked at different types of imagery analysis to determine if there is a good way to identify potential violators for inspection or closer monitoring. The short answer is, not the way I did it but there probably is a way, it just isn't likely worth the extra time and cost. Visual inspection of imagery is relatively easy, fast, and accurate enough (and much cheaper than some of the other program-based alternatives). I've written it up formally, available upon request, but thought I'd post an annotated figure that gives the general idea of the methods and findings.