Project Information

Project Timeline: July 2012-September 2014. This project has been completed.
Principal Investigator: Jaime Collazo, USGS North Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Implements Science Plan Theme: 2: Land Use and Land Cover Change Projections

Key Points

• Developed method to make urban growth scenarios for large regions by modifying an existing USGS model
• Developed scenarios for Landscape Conservation Cooperatives across the Southeast
• Provides information to make urbanization easier to incorporate into climate/ecological projections

Overview

The Southeast US has a wide range of ecosystems, flora, and fauna. But, human development and climate change threatens many of these ecosystems. Resource managers need to adapt their current conservation efforts. Increasing ecosystem resilience is a new focus for conservation.

Climate change challenges many strategies used by conservation planners and managers. Decisions assumed management actions, not climate, would change the conditions of the land. But, climate change will likely change important factors like temperature and precipitation. This makes it very hard to maintain conditions in conservation lands. We need to make new strategies that consider the effects of climate and land-use change.

Many models showing urban growth are very local, and can’t be used across large regions. This project supported the Southeast Regional Assessment Project (SERAP) by developing urban growth scenarios for the regions needed by the project. We did this by modifying the USGS SLEUTH model. We were able to make scenarios for very large areas, including the ranges of multiple Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs). This project expanded previous work into the Caribbean LCC. This allows LCCs to understand urbanization over long-term time scales.