Building patterns and landscape fragmentation in northern Wisconsin, USA

Housing growth is prevalent in rural areas in the United States and landscape fragmentation is one of its many effects. Since the 1930s, rural sprawl has been increasing in areas rich in recreational amenities. The question is how housing growth has affected landscape fragmentation. We thus tested three hypotheses relating land cover and land ownership to density and spatial pattern of buildings, and examined whether building density or spatial pattern of buildings was a better predictor for landscape fragmentation. Housing locations were mapped from 117 1:24,000-scale USGS topographic maps across northern Wisconsin. Patch-level landscape metrics were calculated on the terrestrial area remaining after applying 50, 100 and 250 m disturbance zones around each building. Our results showed that building density and the spatial pattern of buildings were affected mostly by lake area, public land ownership, and the abundance of coniferous forest, agricultural land, and grassland. A full 40% of the houses were within 100 m of lakeshores. The clustering of buildings within 100 m of lakeshores limited fragmentation farther away. In contrast, agricultural and grassland areas were correlated with higher building density, higher fragmentation, and more dispersed building pattern possible legacies of agricultural settlement patterns. Understanding which factors influence building density and fragmentation is useful for landscape level planning and ecosystem management in northern Wisconsin and areas that share similar social and environmental constraints.

[1]  D. Bates,et al.  Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS , 2001 .

[2]  Arthur S. Lieberman,et al.  Landscape Ecology , 1994, Springer New York.

[3]  M. Meyer,et al.  Impact of lakeshore development on green frog abundance , 2003 .

[4]  P. Kareiva.  Population dynamics in spatially complex environments: theory and data , 1990 .

[5]  James R. Anderson,et al.  A land use and land cover classification system for use with remote sensor data , 1976 .

[6]  R. Naiman.  Water, society and landscape ecology , 1996, Landscape Ecology.

[7]  R. B. Hammer,et al.  Human demographic trends and landscape level forest management in the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens , 2001 .

[8]  Volker C. Radeloff,et al.  Road Density and Landscape Pattern in Relation to Housing Density, and Ownership, Land Cover, and Soils , 2005, Landscape Ecology.

[9]  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.

[10]  P. Eagles,et al.  Effects of Residential Development on Forest-Dwelling Neotropical Migrant Songbirds , 1995 .

[11]  Joan Iverson Nassauer,et al.  Culture and changing landscape structure , 1995, Landscape Ecology.

[12]  Influence of lakeshore development on breeding bird communities in a mixed northern forest , 2002 .

[13]  A. Nucci,et al.  The ‘Clean Break’ Revisited: Is US Population Again Deconcentrating? , 1997, Environment & planning A.

[14]  C. Griffin,et al.  Housing developments in rural New England: effects on forest birds , 2000 .

[15]  Incorporating Ecology into Land Use Planning: The Songbirds' Case for Clustered Development , 2003 .

[16]  Agnes M. Larson,et al.  Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin , 1952 .

[17]  Susan I. Stewart,et al.  The wildland-urban interface in the United States based on 125 million building locations. , 2005, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[18]  H. Andrén,et al.  Effects of habitat fragmentation on birds and mammals in landscapes with different proportions of suitable habitat: a review , 1994 .

[19]  Thomas M. Lillesand,et al.  Statewide land cover derived from multiseasonal Landsat TM data: A retrospective of the WISCLAND project , 2002 .

[20]  Hong S. He,et al.  Forest landscape change in the northwestern Wisconsin Pine Barrens from pre-European settlement to the present , 1999 .

[21]  Volker C. Radeloff,et al.  Rural and Suburban Sprawl in the U.S. Midwest from 1940 to 2000 and Its Relation to Forest Fragmentation , 2005 .

[22]  M. Brittingham,et al.  Have Cowbirds Caused Forest Songbirds to Decline , 1983 .

[23]  S. A. Temple,et al.  RURAL RESIDENTS' FREE-RANGING DOMESTIC CATS: A SURVEY , 1993 .

[24]  S. Chatterjee,et al.  Regression Analysis by Example , 1979 .

[25]  Mark Hostetler,et al.  Scale, birds, and human decisions: a potential for integrative research in urban ecosystems , 1999 .

[26]  R. Murphy.  The geography of the northwestern pine barrens of Wisconsin , 1931 .

[27]  N. Thompson Hobbs,et al.  Estimating the cumulative effects of development on wildlife habitat , 1997 .

[28]  R. Hobbs,et al.  Biological Consequences of Ecosystem Fragmentation: A Review , 1991 .

[29]  T. Vale,et al.  Wisconsin land and life , 1998 .

[30]  V. Keller,et al.  Examination of the effects of disturbance on birds with reference to its importance in ecological assessments , 1992 .

[31]  Randall G. Arendt.  Basing Cluster Techniques on Development Densities Appropriate to the Area , 1997 .

[32]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Impacts of Lakeshore Residential Development on Coarse Woody Debris in North Temperate Lakes , 1996 .

[33]  James A. Rodgers,et al.  Set‐Back Distances to Protect Nesting Bird Colonies from Human Disturbance in Florida , 1995 .

[34]  S. Chatterjee,et al.  Regression Analysis by Example , 1979 .

[35]  Volker C. Radeloff,et al.  Characterizing dynamic spatial and temporal residential density patterns from 1940-1990 across the North Central United States , 2004 .

[36]  Daniel G. Brown,et al.  Land use and forest cover on private parcels in the Upper Midwest USA, 1970 to 1990 , 2003, Landscape Ecology.

[37]  E. Nordheim,et al.  Quantitative classification of a historic northern Wisconsin (U.S.A.) landscape: mapping forests at regional scales , 2002 .

[38]  Dazhong Wen.  Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions , 1997 .

[39]  M. Turner,et al.  LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY : The Effect of Pattern on Process 1 , 2002 .

[40]  Joanna Burger,et al.  A 20-YR STUDY DOCUMENTING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TURTLE DECLINE AND HUMAN RECREATION' , 1995 .

[41]  C. Braak,et al.  Toward Ecologically Scaled Landscape Indices , 2001, The American Naturalist.

[42]  E. E. Hardy,et al.  A Land Use and Land Cover Classification System for Use with Remote Sensor Data GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 964 , 2006 .

[43]  John F. Dwyer,et al.  Movement of people across the landscape: a blurring of distinctions between areas, interests, and issues affecting natural resource management , 2004 .

[44]  V. Carstensen.  Farms or forests; evolution of a state land policy for northern Wisconsin, 1850-1932. , 1958 .

[45]  M. Turner,et al.  Explaining Human Settlement Patterns in a Recreational Lake District: Vilas County, Wisconsin, USA , 2002, Environmental management.

[46]  Andrea Wright Parmenter,et al.  Ecological Causes and Consequences of Demographic Change in the New West , 2002 .

[47]  N. T. Hobbs,et al.  Recreational trails, human activity, and nest predation in lowland riparian areas , 2000 .

[48]  R. Haight,et al.  Landscape change in the Midwest: an integrated research and development program. , 2000 .

[49]  G. Fuguitt.  The nonmetropolitan population turnaround. , 1985, Annual review of sociology.

[50]  P. Gobster,et al.  Private forestland parcelization and development in Wisconsin's Northwoods: perceptions of resource-oriented stakeholders , 2004 .

[51]  Lenore Fahrig,et al.  Relative Effects of Habitat Loss and Fragmentation on Population Extinction , 1997 .

[52]  G. J. G. Upton,et al.  Spatial data Analysis by Example , 1985 .