Journal
BIOSCIENCE
Volume 60, Issue 4, Pages 286-298Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1525/bio.2010.60.4.7
Keywords
forest cover; land-use change; forest transition; eastern United States
Categories
Funding
- US Environmental Protection Agency
- NASA
- US Geological Survey (USGS) Office of Global Change
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available