Simulating land change scenarios to resolve urbanization-conservation conflicts at the edge of metropolis

Background/Question/Methods

Increases in population and per-capita land consumption continue to drive land-use changes that directly threaten the persistence of biodiversity and natural ecosystems. Conflicts frequently arise between demands for development and the conservation of natural resources. Simulation models of land-use/land-cover change provide powerful analytical tools to address challenging policy issues associated with environmental pressures such as rapid urbanization. We applied the Future Urban-Regional Environment Simulation (FUTURES) model to examine outcomes of conservation planning scenarios for urban and rural growth in the North Carolina Piedmont through the year 2030. The FUTURES model is a generalized, spatially explicit framework for simulating realistic spatial structures of per-capita land use change and settlement patterns. It is specifically designed to understand when, where, and how much land development occurs by taking into account multiple influential factors from environmental, socioeconomic, and infrastructural dimensions. Here we use the model to understand how future development resulting from various land use planning trajectories will conflict with regional conservation priorities and influence the structure of the landscape.

Results/Conclusions

Results of multiple FUTURES simulations indicate that if current trends continue, conflicts between development and the protection of natural resources are indeed inevitable. Alternative scenarios that incorporate planning for natural resource conservation show that conflicts can be significantly minimized without hindering development. However, conflicts were difficult to avoid in locations that are expected to undergo large quantities of growth. Planning scenarios of reduced per-capita land consumption demonstrated conflict alleviation in high growth areas. Across the study region, reduced per-capita land use not only limited conflict and left greater amounts of forested and agricultural land behind, but also resulted in reduced forest fragmentation. Analysis of these land change scenarios provided an important avenue for the exploration of potential landscape level impacts of future development on ecological communities and conservation priorities. These realistic visualizations of alternative future landscape patterns are currently being used to motivate community stakeholders and guide effective preservation of the region’s remaining natural resources.