Southern Research Station

Title: The consequences of landscape change on ecological resources: An assessment of the United States Mid-Atlantic region, 1973-1993

Author: Jones, K. Bruce; Neale, Anne C.; Wade, Timothy G.; Wickham, James D.; Cross, Chad L.; Edmonds, Curtis M.; Loveland, Thomas R.; Nash, Maliha S.; Riitters, Kurt H.; Smith, Elizabeth R.

Date: 2001

Source: Ecosystem Health 7(4): 229-242

Description: Spatially explicit identification of changes in ecological conditions over large areas is key to targeting and prioitizing areas for environmental protection and restoration by managers at watershed, basin, and regional scales. A critical limitation to this point has been the development of methods to conduct such broad-scale assessments. Field-based methods have proven to be too costly and too inconsistent in their application to make estimates of ecological conditions over large areas. New spatial data derived from satellite models relating landscape composition and pattern to ecological endpoints, and geographic information systems (GIS) make it possible to evaluate ecological conditions at multiple scales over broad geographic regions. In this study, we demonstrate the application of spatially distributed models for bird habitat quality and nitrogen yield to streams to assess the consequences of land cover change across the mod-Atlantic region between the 1970s and 1990s. Moreover, we present a way to evaluate spatial concordance between models related to different environmental endpoints. Results of this study should help environmental managers in the mid-Atlantic region target those areas in need of conservation and protection.

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Citation

Jones, K. Bruce; Neale, Anne C.; Wade, Timothy G.; Wickham, James D.; Cross, Chad L.; Edmonds, Curtis M.; Loveland, Thomas R.; Nash, Maliha S.; Riitters, Kurt H.; Smith, Elizabeth R.  2001.  The consequences of landscape change on ecological resources: An assessment of the United States Mid-Atlantic region, 1973-1993.   Ecosystem Health 7(4): 229-242