Land-use Pressure and a Transition to Forest-cover Loss in the Eastern United States

Contemporary land-use pressures have a significant impact on the extent and condition of forests in the eastern United States, causing a regional-scale decline in forest cover. Earlier in the 20th century, land cover was on a trajectory of forest expansion that followed agricultural abandonment. However, the potential for forest regeneration has slowed, and the extent of regional forest cover has declined by more than 4.0%. Using remote-sensing data, statistical sampling, and change-detection methods, this research shows how land conversion varies spatially and temporally across the East from 1973–2000, and how those changes affect regional land-change dynamics. The analysis shows that agricultural land use has continued to decline, and that this enables forest recovery; however, an important land-cover transition has occurred, from a mode of regional forest-cover gain to one of forest-cover loss caused by timber cutting cycles, urbanization, and other land-use demands.

[1]  Conservation Reserve Program: Enrollment Statistics for Signup Periods 1-12 and Fiscal Years 1986-93 , 1995 .

[2]  J. W. Bruce,et al.  The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths , 2001 .

[3]  Ralph J. Alig,et al.  Private timberlands: growing demands, shrinking land base. , 2002 .

[4]  J. Jenkins,et al.  What does nonforest land contribute to the global carbon balance , 2002 .

[5]  Stephen V. Stehman,et al.  An evaluation of sampling strategies to improve precision of estimates of gross change in land use and land cover , 2005 .

[6]  J. Omernik.  Ecoregions of the Conterminous United States , 1987 .

[7]  Thomas Rudel,et al.  Sprawl and forest cover: what is the relationship? , 2005 .

[8]  Hugh Kelley,et al.  Assessing the transition from deforestation to forest regrowth with an agent-based model of land cover change for south-central Indiana (USA) , 2008 .

[9]  Eric F. Lambin,et al.  Forest transitions: towards a global understanding of land use change , 2005 .

[10]  C. Walters,et al.  Uncertainty, resource exploitation, and conservation: lessons from history. , 1993, Science.

[11]  R. Dickinson.  Global change and terrestrial hydrology–a review , 1991 .

[12]  A. Adelaja,et al.  Land Values, Market Forces, and Declining Dairy Herd Size: Evidence from an Urban-Influenced Region , 1998, Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.

[13]  H. Delcourt,et al.  Carbon Budget of the Southeastern U.S. Biota: Analysis of Historical Change in Trend from Source to Sink , 1980, Science.

[14]  Mark A. White,et al.  Comparing Spatial Pattern in Unaltered Old-Growth and Disturbed Forest Landscapes. , 1993, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[15]  Ramakrishna R. Nemani,et al.  Satellite monitoring of global land cover changes and their impact on climate , 1995 .

[16]  J. Wickham,et al.  The effect of Appalachian mountaintop mining on interior forest , 2007, Landscape Ecology.

[17]  G. Peterken,et al.  Americans and Their Forests. A Historical Geography. , 1990 .

[18]  Jingyun Fang,et al.  Returning forests analyzed with the forest identity , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[19]  A. Mather,et al.  The forest transition: a theoretical basis , 1998 .

[20]  David R. Foster,et al.  Three hundred years of forest and land‐use change in Massachusetts, USA , 2002 .

[21]  G. Likens,et al.  Ecosystem Thinking in the Northern Forest—and Beyond , 2009 .

[22]  Kenneth M. Johnson,et al.  Rural land-use trends in the conterminous United States, 1950-2000 , 2005 .

[23]  David M. Theobald,et al.  Placing exurban land‐use change in a human modification framework , 2004 .

[24]  Henry L. Gholz,et al.  Regional carbon dynamics in the southeastern U.S. coastal plain : Balancing land cover type, timber harvesting, fire, and environmental variation , 2006 .

[25]  R. Morrill,et al.  Classic Map Revisited: The Growth of Megalopolis , 2006 .

[26]  N. Bliss,et al.  Changes in population and agricultural land in conterminous United States counties, 1790 to 1997 , 2002 .

[27]  Murray K Clayton,et al.  Historical forest baselines reveal potential for continued carbon sequestration , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[28]  Soumyananda Dinda.  Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey , 2004 .

[29]  J. E. Pinder,et al.  Deforestation, Reforestation and Forest Fragmentation on the Upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina and Georgia , 1999 .

[30]  A. Angelsen.  Forest Cover Change in Space and Time: Combining the Von Thunen and Forest Transition Theories , 2007 .

[31]  Navin Ramankutty,et al.  Estimating historical changes in land cover:North American croplands from 1850 to 1992 , 1999 .

[32]  Gregg Marland,et al.  Carbon management and biodiversity. , 2003, Journal of Environmental Management.

[33]  Thomas R. Loveland,et al.  Contemporary Carbon Dynamics in Terrestrial Ecosystems in the Southeastern Plains of the United States , 2004 .

[34]  D. Griffith,et al.  Forest Statistics for Maine, 1995 , 1996 .

[35]  F. Putz,et al.  Dangers of carbon-based conservation , 2009 .

[36]  R. Heimlich,et al.  Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond: Impacts on Agriculture and Rural Land , 2012 .

[37]  S. Stehman,et al.  Statistical sampling to characterize recent United States land-cover change , 2003 .

[38]  Stephen V. Stehman,et al.  A Strategy for Estimating the Rates of Recent United States Land-Cover Changes , 2002 .

[39]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Global Consequences of Land Use , 2005, Science.

[40]  T. Loveland,et al.  The characteristics and interpretability of land surface change and implications for project design , 2004 .

[41]  Houghton,et al.  The U.S. Carbon budget: contributions from land-Use change , 1999, Science.

[42]  Richard A. Houghton,et al.  Changes in terrestrial carbon storage in the United States. 1: The roles of agriculture and forestry. , 2000 .

[43]  B. Turner.  Toward Integrated Land-Change Science: Advances in 1.5 Decades of Sustained International Research on Land-Use and Land-Cover Change , 2002 .

[44]  John Fraser Hart,et al.  LAND USE CHANGE IN A PIEDMONT COUNTY , 1980 .

[45]  F. Achard,et al.  A Synthesis of Information on Rapid Land-cover Change for the Period 1981–2000 , 2005 .