Editor’s Choice publication provides a landscape context perspective of forest change
Everyone knows that forest comes and goes for many reasons, and that the landscape context of forest can change as urbanization or expanding agriculture encroach upon forest land. A national analysis of forest change, conducted in support of the Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment, concludes that the net change of the landscape context of forest exceeds the net change of the forest itself.
The setting of human land use around changing forests partly determines the social-ecological outcomes of the change. These relationships were recently examined by Forest Service scientists in an article that was Editor’s Choice in the journal Land’s Special Issue entitled “Land Change Modelling.”
Forest change is both constrained by, and contributes to, a dynamic landscape context. Forest Service scientists examined the status and change of forest area in the continental United States from 2001 to 2016. They measured landscape context by describing the dominance and juxtaposition of developed and agriculture land in relation to forest and other land.
The net rate of forest cover loss was highest within landscapes dominated by developed land cover, but the forest area in those landscapes increased by because they expanded to include additional forest area. The net rate of forest cover loss was lowest in agriculture-dominated landscapes, but the forest area in those landscapes decreased as they contracted to exclude some forest area. The percent of forest area exhibiting a change of landscape context was larger than the percent loss of forest area itself. Ultimately, these patterns can help us understand the socio-economic conditions and implications of changing land uses across the US.
Pictured: Flow diagrams of forest area change in the United States. The left chart shows total change including forest/non-forest change. The right shows the fraction of total change that can be attributed to the shifting mosaic of persistent forest. Within each diagram, the flow is from 2001 (left) to 2016 (right). Forest Service image.
