Session Information
| Session | Poster Session | | Date | Monday (2008-04-07) | | Time | 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | | Room | Grand Terrace |
Presentation Information
| Presenter | Urs Gimmi | | Title | Land use/land cover change in and around protected areas: Rates of change, trends and management implications for the Great Lakes region | | Affiliation | UW Madison, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology | | Authors | Urs Gimmi, Shelley Schmidt, Ulf Gafvert, Volker Radeloff | | Keywords | Aerial photography, Great Lakes, Housing growth, Landscape fragmentation, Road density | | Presentation Type | Poster | Abstract:
Protected areas are in danger of becoming islands in a sea of human dominated landscapes. In recent decades, surroundings of protected areas have been increasingly converted to agriculture, settlements and urban land uses. Land use intensification in these zones is of concern because it reduces additional adjacent habitat and may limit management options inside protected areas. Consequently, it is crucial to reconstruct past land use changes to appropriately assess the impact of future changes on ecological functioning of protected areas.
Our goal was to reconstruct land use changes for two National Lakeshores in the Great Lakes region (Indiana Dunes and Pictured Rocks). Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is situated in the middle of an urban setting in the intimate proximity of Chicago whereas Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is surrounded by densely populated forest and rural area. These parks represent two extremes of variability within the reserves that are part of the Great Lakes Network of the National Park Service.
Historical (1940s) and recent (2005) aerial photographs were used to digitize land cover, roads and buildings for the two National Lakeshores and their surroundings. Changes in land cover classes as well as road development and housing growth were calculated for the NPS holdings plus a 2-mile buffer zone. Landscape indices were used to measure land cover class abundance and their fragmentation.
Road and housing density increased significantly more in the buffer zones than in the protected areas but on completely different levels for both National Lakeshores. Particularly the surroundings of Indiana Dunes has undergone dramatic change in the past and the current landscape is highly fragmented. During the past 65 years building density increased from 15 to 121 buildings/km2 and road density more than doubled from 3.1 to 6.7. In the same time inside the park the respective values only slightly increased from 7 to 9 buildings/ km2 and from 3.1 to 4.2 km/km2.
Our results show that both National Lakeshores were fairly successful in stopping habitat destruction and fragmentation within their boundaries but less successful in reducing land use changes in their surroundings. We recommend carefully monitoring future changes in and around protected areas and developing appropriate management tools to maintain the ecological functioning of reserves. |
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