Coupled simulation of land cover change and natural dynamics in Front Range Corridor, Colorado

Background/Question/Methods

Land cover change is the result of reciprocal interactions and feedbacks between socioeconomic and natural processes that can be better understood within the framework of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS). The Colorado Front Range Corridor is a mixture of urban, agricultural, grassland, and diverse forest types, making it an ideal natural laboratory to investigate land cover change using the CHANS framework. We explored future scenarios of human-driven land use change and natural vegetation dynamics using the CHANGE model, which integrates a demand-allocation land use change module, a state and transition succession module for natural vegetation dynamics, and a spatially explicit fire initiation and spread module. We used the model to project landscape change and fire risk for wildland urban interface (WUI) areas over an approximately 48000 km² study area through 2050 under A2 and B1 scenarios.

Results/Conclusions

Results indicated that the area of young forest and deciduous forest increased due to climate-driven increase of burned area. The degree of forest species and structure change depended on the fire regime, with more dramatic change simulated under the A2 scenario. Expansion of developed areas resulted in loss of natural vegetation, and most of the newly developed area was in the Great Plains. However, expansion of the WUI mainly occurred in the forests of the Southern Rocky Mountains and was concentrated along roads. The increase of burned rate, along with the expansion of WUI contributed an increasing fire risk for WUI area, which may translate into more human property loss in the future. The results suggested that: (1) increase of young forest may lead to higher drought and fire susceptibility, further amplifying fire risks; (2) fire and fuel management in the WUI is already challenging and these challenges will be greater with continued expansion of the WUI and changes in fire regimes; (3) changing land cover and natural vegetation composition and structure in our study area may have significant effects on a variety of ecosystem services.