Abstract
Protecting, as well as restoring, natural resources within the urban landscape has environmental and
economic importance, especially as the global population continues to shift towards urban areas. One
extreme legacy of rapid development and urbanization is stream burial. Here, riverless urban areas are
mapped in 11 Megaregions within the United States, with additional focus on the Great Lakes, using a
semi-automated, geoprocessing workflow completed within ArcMap10.2. Combining U.S. Census Bureau
Urban Areas (UAs), Impervious Surface Coverage (ISC) from the 2011 National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD),
and National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) flowlines, allowed the delineation of urban stream deserts
(UrbSDs), or watershed areas where stream channels have likely been buried or removed. Approximately
6.2% of the area of UAs (or 11,490 km2) within the 11 Megaregions are UrbSD, and they are most
prevalent in major cities in the North California and Great Lakes Megaregions. More specifically, 537
UrbSD exist within the Great Lakes Megaregion, with Detroit (MI) and Chicago (IL) comprising some of
the largest UrbSDs in the United States. Regardless of Megaregion, UrbSDs represent the most intensely
urbanized components of the urban environment, as UrbSDs have higher population densities, impervious
surface coverage and developed land uses than adjacent urban areas. UrbSD are unique, but poorly
understood, components of the urban ecosystem that highlights the consequences of sacrificing longterm
environmental sustainability (e.g., ecosystem services) for short-term economic growth (rapid
development).
