Forecasting and assessing the impact of urban sprawl in coastal watersheds along eastern Lake Michigan

The Land Transformation Model (LTM), which has been developed to forecast urban‐use changes in a grid‐based geographical information system, was used to explore the consequences of future urban changes to the years 2020 and 2040 using non‐urban sprawl and urban‐sprawl trends. The model was executed over a large area containing nine of the major coastal watersheds of eastern Lake Michigan. We found that the Black‐Macatawa and Lower Grand watersheds will experience the most urban change in the next 20–40 years. These changes will likely impact the hydrological budget, might reduce the amount of nitrogen exported to these watersheds, result in a significant loss of prime agricultural land and reduce the amount of forest cover along the streams in many of these watersheds. The results of this work have significant implications to the Lake Michigan Lake Area Management Plan (LaMP) that was recently developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.