Resource land loss and forest vulnerability in the Chesapeake Bay watershed

C. A. Jantz 1 , S. J. Goetz 1 , P. A. Jantz 1 and B. Melchior 2

The Woods Hole Research Center (1)
The University of Maryland (2)

The contemporary pattern of urban development in industrialized countries is increasingly taking the form of low density, decentralized residential and commercial development. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which is located within the mid-Atlantic region, dispersed development patterns have been linked to habitat fragmentation and declining water quality. Our objectives were to document how this urbanization process has expanded throughout the watershed and to explore how lands comprising the natural resource base, particularly forests, have been replaced by a matrix of the built environment. We accomplished this by mapping impervious surface cover (houses, roads, etc) and forests across the ~200,000 km2 area using a time series of satellite imagery. We calculated metrics of land use change and used these to estimate the loss of resource lands across the region. We also used the time series to calibrate a spatial model of urban land use change, and forecasted future development patterns in Maryland out to 2030 under different policy scenarios. Using Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Strategic Forest Lands Assessment (SFLA), which evaluates forest resources in terms of their economic and ecologic value, and Maryland’s Green Infrastructure, which identifies ecologically valuable patches of contiguous forests, we evaluated the vulnerability of forest resources in Maryland. Threats associated with loss and fragmentation were identified. Future work will focus on potential impacts to specific biota and to water quality, as well as a region-wide application of the urban land use change model.

Keywords: urban sprawl, forest vulnerability, resource land loss

(presentation)