Movement of people across the landscape: a blurring of distinctions between areas, interests, and issues affecting natural resource management

The spread of development from cities into surrounding forests and farms continues to receive a great deal of attention from the media and resource managers in the US and other countries. However, suburban sprawl is just one of many inter-linked components of the movement of people across the landscape that influence resource management. Substantial changes are taking place in urban areas, fringe areas, and rural recreation/amenity areas. In this paper, we describe these changes, explore their commonalities and interconnectedness, and discuss the implications that they may have for natural resource management. What emerges is a blurring of the distinctions between what have traditionally been considered urban or rural problems with respect to natural resource issues, interest group concerns, and resource management strategies. Our findings suggest prospects for substantial changes in resource management and the public and private programs designed to support it. Among the emphasis areas for natural resource management that emerge with the changing distribution of people over the landscape are changes in management situations, management processes, and research needs. The changing management situations include increased emphasis on interface and intermix areas, restoring human-impacted natural areas, and addressing complex ecosystem problems. Changing management processes include adaptive forest management, working collaboratively with diverse landowners and other partners, interacting with citizens on a regular basis, and taking a landscape perspective on natural resources and their management. Questions for policy and program development and for research focus on a better understanding of linkages among management activities across the urban to rural landscape. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.