Assessing Landscape Change and Processes of Recurrence, Replacement, and Recovery in the Southeastern Coastal Plains, USA

Abstract

The processes of landscape change are complex, exhibiting spatial variability as well as linear, cyclical, and reversible characteristics. To better understand the various processes that cause transformation, a data aggregation, validation, and attribution approach was developed and applied to an analysis of the Southeastern Coastal Plains (SECP). The approach integrates information from available national land-use, natural disturbance, and land-cover data to efficiently assess spatially-specific changes and causes. Between 2001 and 2006, the processes of change affected 7.8 % of the SECP but varied across small-scale ecoregions. Processes were placed into a simple conceptual framework to explicitly identify the type and direction of change based on three general characteristics: replacement, recurrence, and recovery. Replacement processes, whereby a land use or cover is supplanted by a new land use, including urbanization and agricultural expansion, accounted for approximately 15 % of the extent of change. Recurrent processes that contribute to cyclical changes in land cover, including forest harvest/replanting and fire, accounted for 83 %. Most forest cover changes were recurrent, while the extents of recurrent silviculture and forest replacement processes such as urbanization far exceeded forest recovery processes. The total extent of landscape recovery, from prior land use to natural or semi-natural vegetation cover, accounted for less than 3 % of change. In a region of complex change, increases in transitory grassland and shrubland covers were caused by large-scale intensive plantation silviculture and small-scale activities including mining reclamation. Explicit identification of the process types and dynamics presented here may improve the understanding of land-cover change and landscape trajectory.

Regional Differences in Upland Forest to Developed (Urban) Land Cover Conversions in the Conterminous U.S., 1973–2011

“…A way to improve the multi-scale regionalization of mapping forest to urban developed land cover conversion may be the use of Level IV ecoregions using available multi-date wall-to-wall land cover datasets. Drummond et al [61] used this scale for the 2001-2006 era within two Level III ecoregions in the Southeast U.S. and showed urban growth at a finer scale without losing the next scale up in geographic size. Forested land preservation planning may be better articulated and discussed using the results from land change mapping using multi-scale ecoregions that commonly cross local and even state political jurisdictions.…”

Ecosystem Services in Working Lands of the Southeastern USA

“…An important distinction of the SE is that the proportion of developed land classes is far higher than in the rest of the US, likely driven by high rates of urbanization, especially in the CPEco, where it is expected to increase in the coming decades (Zhao et al, 2013). Land use is highly dynamic compared with the rest of the US (Sleeter et al, 2013), and some land cover changes are recurrent processes such as in forested areas where land use is heavily focused on silviculture (Drummond et al, 2015;. Analyses and forecasting of changing ecosystem services from coupled agricultural-natural land covers in the Southeast will have to account for the drivers of land use intensification, in addition to climate change.…”

“…The challenge to manage balances of ecosystem services in working lands requires a more nuanced understanding of landscapes and ecosystems over time and space, with an adequate frame of reference to capture both the spatial and the temporal dynamics of a region. Over time, the balance of services change in response to changes in their underlying drivers such as land use (Sohl et al, 2010), which has been well-documented for the Southeast (Southworth et al, 2006;Drummond et al, 2015). Spatially, we conceptualize the dynamics among services in the Southeast as not unlike the fictional "pushmi-pullyu" character, sporting two heads on either end of its body (Lofting, 1920), in which coupled ecosystem services of some areas "push" (provide positive services or benefits) while others "pull" (essentially disservices) in a dynamic interplay of trade-offs and synergies.…”

Assessing environmental fragility in a mining areafor specific spatial planning purposes

“…The management of this type of environment entails political, economic and social processes (Wyant et al, 1995;Oikonomou et al, 2011), which target ecological conservation and renewal while taking into account the new resources needed by existing communities. This task is often made both complex and difficult because of clashes between differing perspectives and strategies across many different spatial scales: global, national, regional and local (Drummond et al, 2015). For local and sub-regional authorities to take the best planning decisions in the case of fragile environments, including those damaged by mining activities, it is also very important to acknowledge the interactions between biotic and abiotic components, between the terrestrial and aquatic ones (Omernik and Griffith, 2014), and between the internal and external environments of territorial systems.…”