Societies Choices: Land Use Changes, Forest Fragmentation, and Conservation

The November 2006 issue of Science Findings, a newsletter of the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNWRS), focuses on changing land use patterns, forest fragmentation, and conservation. Ralph Alig, a researcher with the PNWRS in Corvallis , OR , has studied rates of development over time since the 1980s. He found that regionally, the largest increases in developed areas within the United States between 1982 and 1997 were in the South. Over one-third of the South’s developed area was added during those 15 years. Indeed, 7 of the 10 states with the largest additions of developed area are in the South. The top three – Texas , Florida , and North Carolina – each added more developed area than in the country’s most populous state, California . The South, like the Northeast, now has approximately 12 percent of its total land area developed.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes www.southernsustainableforests.org