Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    EXURBAN DEVELOPMENT: QUANTIFICATION, FORECAST, AND EFFECTS ON BIRD COMMUNITIES

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    SuarezRubio_umd_0117E_12545.pdf (4.978Mb)
    No. of downloads: 265

    Date
    2011
    Author
    Suarez-Rubio, Marcela
    Advisor
    Lookingbill, Todd R
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Rural landscapes in the United States have changed dramatically in recent decades due to the rapid development of private rural lands into low-density residential exurban development. This land conversion is a rising cause of concern due to its potential effects on biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Although exurbanized area is thought to have a significant increase in eastern deciduous forests, a rigorous assessment of exurban trends, drivers, and ecological consequences has yet to be undertaken. First, I develop a novel analytic approach to identify exurban areas and assess how much land has been converted to exurban development in the Mid-Atlantic region. The approach describes mixed pixels containing exurban development as a combination of land covers and uses decision-tree classification and morphological spatial pattern analysis to further separate exurban development from other forest disturbing events. The results indicate that exurban development is a pervasive and fast-growing form of land use in the region. Second, I evaluate the effectiveness of two contrasting modeling approaches in capturing exurban growth at a local and county scale. Exurban growth was effectively captured by the spatially-explicit econometric model at both scales and the pattern-based model only performed well at the county scale. Thus, pattern-based models like SLEUTH can forewarn potential coarse-scale losses of natural resources in exurban areas, but are less useful at finer scale or for assessing potential impacts of implementing land-use policies. Third, I assess whether exurban development degrades avian breeding territories over time and forest birds' response to those changes. I conclude that exurban development is degrading breeding habitats by reducing forest cover and increasing habitat fragmentation. Forest birds exhibited a threshold response to deteriorating breeding habitats in the vicinity of breeding territories and adjacent foraging areas being forest specialists the most sensitive group. To avoid the likelihood of sudden bird population declines amongst further habitat loss and fragmentation, a synergy among land managers, planners, and decision-makers will become increasingly important to mitigate the impacts of exurban development in the Mid-Atlantic region.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/11981
    Collections
    • Biology Theses and Dissertations
    • MEES Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility