Examining Land Use Changes to Evaluate the Effects of Land Management in a Complex, Dynamic Landscape

Abstract

Anthropogenic alterations to landscapes have increased as the human population continues to rise, leading to detrimental changes in natural habitats. Ecological restoration assists in recovery by altering habitats to improve conditions and foster biodiversity. We examined land cover changes over time within a complex, dynamic region in the Midwest to assess the long-term effects of conservation. We used Landsat 8 bands for a 15-class land cover map of Oak Openings Region using supervised classification. We validated our map and achieved an overall accuracy of 71.2% from correctly classified points out of total visited points. Change over 10 years, from 2006 to 2016, was explored by comparing class statistics from FRAGSTATS between our map and original land cover map. We found that natural land, i.e., forest and early successional, covered 33%, with 10% permanently protected, while human-modified land, i.e., agricultural and developed, covered 67% of the region. Over 10 years, natural classes increased, and cultural classes decreased by 5.8%. There were decreases for the three forest communities and increases for the two early successional communities. These changes are likely the result of natural recovery and disturbance, and conservation efforts by the Green Ribbon Initiative. Changes in habitat also came with distribution changes, e.g., increased fragmentation for some classes, which was readily visible. Our useful method measured functionality by emphasizing changes in composition and configuration. Our approach provides a tool for assessing cumulative regional-scale effects from site-level management and conservation. This large-scale view for conservation is needed to effectively mitigate future changes.

Identifying factors across multiple scales that impact bat activity and species richness along roads in a fragmented landscape

“…It is a 47600 ha area in Northwest Ohio containing a wide variety of habitat types (Buckman-Sewald et al 2014). About 12% of the region is protected preserve, but the rest is open to development (Abella et al 2017;Martin and Root 2020). The region has experienced major habitat changes since 2009, with a decrease in forests, wet prairie and cropland, and an increase in built-up areas, upland prairie, and savanna (Martin and Root 2020).…”

Modelling vegetation land fragmentation in urban areas of Western Province, Sri Lanka using an Artificial Intelligence-based simulation technique

“…Methods including division index, patch density, number of patches, area-weighted index, and others have been used [13,14]. GIS and Remote Sensing-based analytics include the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index [NDVI] [15][16][17], supervised and unsupervised satellite image classifications for change detection [18][19][20].…”