Fragmentation and Land Use Change

Across the U.S., 2,450 acres of open space are lost to reidential or commercial development every day. Fragmentation and development transform not only the life of the landscape, but also the lives of people who live, work, and visit an area. Resource managers, business leaders, landowners, and community officials are making decisions that will ripple for years, yet they have little access to reliable information on the patterns, the process, or the implications of residential and commercial development. NRS researchers are working to develop a better understanding of land use and land cover change and the effects of forest fragmentation and to develop knowledge and tools to help people make informed choices about how they use natural resources

Selected Research Studies

The Working Forest Initiative: Simulating the cumulative effects of the forest management strategies of multiple landowners on landscape pattern and biodiversity
Sustainable forestry involves the extraction of forest products while maintaining ecosystem integrity to conserve biodiversity and to provide other non-commodity benefits to society.  Population viability is a function of the combined actions of multiple landowners, which create a dynamic mosaic of forest types, stand structures and age distributions.  Consequently, it is necessary to understand how the actions of individual land owners interact with the actions of others to determine the spatial pattern of the landscape mosaic, and therefore its ability to maintain biodiversity. 

Spatiotemporal response of the male Kirtland’s warbler population to changing landscape structure over 26 years
Species conservation remains an important challenge for ecologists and managers given the rate of habitat transformations occurring worldwide.  Strategic planning for wildlife restoration programs over broader geographic regions will become the standard rather than the exception as increasing numbers of populations become smaller and more isolated.  However, there continues to be a lack of synthesis between general principles of the fragmentation process and field evidence.  To further our understanding of habitat loss/fragmentation, we need to examine how populations that currently exist in patchy environments respond to increasing habitat amounts and changing arrangements over long time periods and broad spatial scales simultaneously.    

Changing Midwest Assessment
At the Changing Midwest Assessment (CMA) internet mapping server, public and public officials users can use an interactive, spatially explicit, web-based model to visualize changes that are likely in various likely future scenarios. The characteristics mapped include land cover, forest characteristics, plants and animals, and human demographics. given a range of alternative ecological, economic, and social scenarios.

Parcelization and development of private forestlands
Parcelization and development of private forestlands have become major concerns of public agencies and private groups in many regions across the U.S. and beyond. NRS researchers have examined factors thought to influence parcelization using recent Forest Inventory and Analysis data. Findings showed that some of the greatest changes were happening on the smallest properties, 0-10 acres.

The 2000 wildland-urban interface in the U.S.
The wildland-urban interface is where houses meet or intermingle with wildland vegetation. The WUI is where wildfire pose the biggest risk to human lives and structures. It is also an area of widespread habitat fragmentation, introduction of invasive species and biodiversity loss. Our project provides a detail, national assessment of the WUI across the conterminous United States.

National Woodland Owner Survey
Landowners are the key linkage between society and the land and are a fundamental component in assessing forest resources. The USDA Forest Service conducts the National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) to increase understanding of private woodland owners with an emphasis on non-industrial owners. The NWOS determines who owns the forests of the U.S., why people own forests, and what the future of the forests is. Survey results facilitate the planning and implementation of forest policies and support forest sustainability.