6.10.+Measure+environmental+quality+&land+use?

How do you Measuring environmental quality and landuse?
The skills you need:
 * ==Environmental quality surveys==

Constructing a survey record sheet
====One method is to use a bi-polar survey - this involves choosing pairs of opposite characteristics - for example lots of cans/paper and litter-free, and associated these with a scale score form 1 to 5 [1 poor, 5 good]. Choose 6-10 pairs for example ( your choice), put them in a table with the list of poor environmental qualities on the left and the good ones on the right. Between the 2 have 5 columns headed 1,2,3,4,5. Prepare a copy of the the table for each site to be visited.( However, you could be given an example where it runs from -2,-1,0,1,2 in an exam questions - that can make totally interesting!====

Trial run
Having decided on your bi-polar pairs, create 2 forms and select 2 places, one that you think of really nice and the other not. Trial it and see if the nice one comes out with a high score and the nasty one comes out with a low score. You might decide at this point, that 1 or 2 of the pairs do really help differentiate them and there is another pair that would be better - change them!

Choosing the places to survey
Choose 5 or 6 sites which represent the different type of land-use within the town, so for example the CBD, an industrial area, the 3 main classes of housing and maybe an edge of town site for example shopping or out of town industrial park.

What to do once you are there
Assess each of the characteristics to see what is a fair value - back up your decision with field sketches or photographs, which you can later annotate to show the reasons for your decisions.


 * ==Land transect==

Completing an urban Landuse transect
Choose a path through an urban area that represents the kind of land use variation within the town – so do not choose to go along a duel carriageway or wander through exclusively narrow lanes. To trace the land use, you would probably start at the centre of the CBD. To do a full one you record every single building along the route. But even along this little tiny route, you are taking quite a while! So what could you do instead? Systematic sampling – record – gap a fixed distance - record again. You should measure the distance, but a reasonable compromise is to take so many paces – say 10 or 20 and then record again The first preparation is to make sure your route is representative. The second is to make a big copy of the route, with the side roads named on it (that way you have a better chance of recording you results in more or less the right place). The second thing to do is make a copy of your copy to use for the neat version when you return home! Now you need to work out a key – do you need more that the 5 categories – CBD, industry and low, middle and upper class housing? Probably. It would be good to divide up shops from institutions and other services.
 * Having chosen your route** …
 * What preparations do you need to make?**

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