Published Library Resources

This virtual library holds a wide range of urban forestry resources including: research abstracts and full text journal articles, trade magazine articles, CDs, other technology transfer resources, books (or chapters of books), patents, ordinances, theses and dissertations, and conference proceedings.

Terrestrial vertebrates in urban ecosystems: developing hypotheses for the Gwynns Falls Watershed in Baltimore, Maryland

We review the literature on terrestrial vertebrates in urban and urbanizing areas in terms of the new paradigm in ecology that focuses on the origin, spatial pattern, and current influences of habitat patches. Studies of terrestrial vertebrates have documented differences in species composition ...

State of the south 1998

State of the South 1998 analyzes how developments related to globalization are affecting Southerners and the Southern economy. The report discusses demographics, trends in business mix changes, trade, foreign direct investment, occupational mix changes, immigration, and workforce readiness. It ...

Needs assessment: awareness and attitudes about fire in Florida. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida.

The telephone survey of 675 rural suburban residents of North and Central Florida provides some very useful direction for the development of the Fire Education Toolkit program. Key messages that have been identified by extension agents and home landscaping experts are confirmed by this survey. ...

Metropolitan growth and agriculture: farming in the city's shadow

Farmland acreage in metropolitan counties rose by nearly half between 1974 and 1982 as metropolitan areas were redefined and additional counties were designated as metro. Metro farms are generally smaller, more land intensive in their production, more diverse, and more focused on high-value ...

Amphibian movements in response to forest edges, roads, and streambeds in southern New England

If management of landscape linkages is to be promoted as a means of conserving amphibian populations, it must be demonstrated that amphibian dispersal does not occur independently of ecosystem edges and other salient landscape features. I used drift fences and pitfall traps to intercept dispersing ...

Will wildfire ravage our profession?

Ignited by the huge wildfires of 1999-2000, fire-protection laws are blazing up across the United States, fanned by winds of fear and fed by more than a billion dollars of federal money. Many of these laws contain provisions that threaten both the health of America's native landscapes and the ...

Smart growth in the southeast: new approaches for guiding development

The Southeast has a rich legacy of vibrant communities with a strong sense of identity and place. Historic cities such as Charleston, Savannah, and Alexandria are national treasures, and numerous distinctive smaller communities define the character of the region. The Southeast is also blessed with ...

The role of economic and quality of life values in rural business location

The familiar view of job creation is that business location is largely a function of traditional economic values such as tax structure and cost of doing business. This paper examines the role of other values that may be important to the business location decision. These include the role of a ...

The legal landscape: guidelines for regulating environmental and aesthetic quality

Land-use regulation is a complex issue. This guide explains the legal mechanisms available for maintaining and protecting desired features in various landscape settings. It covers local, state, and federal land-use controls. All types of constraints on aesthetic regulation are discussed, ...

The great Hilton deer debate

Wildlife researcher Bob Warren and graduate students had no idea the firestorm their research would ignite. Nasty letters. Threatening phone calls. Emotional public meetings. Law suits, injunctions, appeals. After all, they\'d been invited to Sea Pines, an upscale community on the Southern tip ...

Urban sprawl, federalism, and the problem of institutional complexity

In both state and federal politics, the ills associated with urban sprawl and the political opportunities these problems present are once again hot topics of discussion. Urban sprawl causes many direct and indirect societal and environmental harms. As part of this analysis of institutional ...

The urban ecosystem: a holistic approach

The Urban Ecosystem: A Holistic Approach is the result of an intensive interdisciplinary examination of the city. This two-part document is the work of approximately 90 specialists from various natural and social sciences who gathered to discuss the city and its problems in a new and, hopefully, ...

Regulation of private forest practices

In the approximately three decades since the advent of the modern environmental movement in the United States, these enduring tensions between public interests and private rights have led to a host of government interventions in free market outcomes, ranging from education and technical and ...

Quantifying the role of urban forests in removing atmospheric carbon dioxide

Urban land in the United States currently occu- pies about 69 million acres with an estimated average crown cover of 28% and an estimated tree biomass of about 27 tons/acre. This structure suggests that the current total urban forest carbon storage in the United States is approximately 800 million ...

Protecting natural areas in fragmented landscapes

Natural areas usually are selected for protection according to the elements contained within them. A focus on content alone, however, is incomplete because the structure and use of the surrounding landscape will determine whether a "protected area" will be able to maintain the most threatened ...

Principles of ecosystem management and sustainable development

This discussion of sustainability and ecosystem management will focus upon four points: (1) What is sustainability?; (2) What is ecosystem management and its relevance to sustainablility?; (3) Examples of the growing acceptance of sustainability and ecosystem management; and (4) Principles of ...

Principles of conservation biology

The field of conservation biology is a new, rapidly growing, and swiftly changing endeavor, a product of the calamitous decline of biodiversity formally recognized by the scientific community in the 1970s. The field grew in the 1980s from an amalgam of disciplines but until the fall Of 1993 no ...

Finding common ground on public and private land

Recent years have seen considerable debate about the ways in which the nation\'s public and private lands are used. Property rights and environmental policy reform occupied a prominent place on the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress, culminating in passage, by the House of Representatives in ...

Federal and state preemption of environmental law: a critical analysis

Striking the appropriate balance between federal, state, and local involvement in environmental law and policy is an elusive task. Because there is a presumption against preemption and a widely accepted requirement that congressional intent to preempt must be clear and manifest, application ...

Endangered ecosystems of the United States: a preliminary assessment of loss and degradtion

We report estimates of doclines of natural ecosystems in the United States, provide a rationale for ecosystem-level conservation, discuss decline criteria for conservation, and relate ecosystem losses to endangerment at species and population levels, Ecosystems are defined generally and at various ...

Ecosystem communities:zoning principles to promote conservation and the economy

The Endangered Species Act, the federal government\'s strongest environmental conservation measure, has spawned numerous natural resources conflicts since its inception in 1973. ... The Survey\'s research represents progress toward overcoming the limitations of the single species conservation ...

Ecological principles and guidelines for managing the use of land

The many ways that people have used and managed land throughout history has emerged as a primary cause of land-cover change around the world. Thus, land use and land management increasingly represent a fundamental source of change in the global environment. Despite their global importance, however, ...

Biological consequences of ecosystem fragmentation: a review

Research on fragmented ecosystems has focused mostly on the biogeographic consequences of the creation of habitat \"islands\" of different sizes, and has provided little of practical value to managers. However, ecosystem fragmentation causes large changes in the physical environment as well as ...

Atmospheric deposition to oak forests along and urban-rural gradient

To determine the patterns of atmospheric deposition and throughfall in the vicinity of a large city, bulk deposition, oak forest throughfall,, and particulate dust deposition were measured at sites along a transect within and to the north of New York City. Concentrations and fluxes of N03, NH4 , ...

As forest homes rise, keen eyes seek smoke

Federal and state forestry agencies, seduced by the mobility of fire-spotting aircraft and the cost-effectiveness of satellites and electronic sensors, stopped staffing most of the more than 8,200 lookouts scattered across the United States. Some especially scenic lookouts were rented to tourists, ...

Land Use

Land-use change in the United States represents an enormous uncontrolled experiment in the ways habitat changes influence plants andanimals. When cities were built, land was plowed, or forests were cut. The effects on our native biota were not considered. Of course, humans have influenced the flora ...

Nonindigenous species

Invasion by nonindigenous species is one of the most important issues in natural resource management and conservation biology today. The ability of nonindigenous species to alter population, community, and ecosystem structure and function is well documented (Elton 1958; Mooney and Drake 1986; ...

Non-timber forest products

Interest in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) is increasing rapidly. At present there are numerous efforts to increase awareness of these products, their management and market potential. However, there is a shortage of information available and there are few means effective in disseminating the ...

Nitrogen saturation in northern forest ecosystems

Human activity has greatly altered the biogeochemical cycles of Earth, generally increasing pollutant concentrations in the atmosphere and deposition rates to the surface. The combustion of fossil fuels is a major component of human impact on the atmosphere and biosphere. Acid deposition, or acid ...

New study looks at wildfires' effects on people

For decades, scientists have studied the ecological effects of wildfire on everything from soil and plants to tiny bugs and grizzly bears. But the recent deaths of wildland firefighters in Washington and the disastrous 2000 fires in Los Alamos, N.M., helped to expose a gap in wildfire ...

Habitat fragmentation

Altenition of habitats by human activity is the greatest threat to the richness of life on Earth. The most visible form of habitat alteration is direct habitat removal, as when a forest is clear-cut, a wetland is drained, a stream is dammed to create a reservoir, or a remnant prairie is converted ...

Forty-eight years of canopy change in a hardwood-hemlock forest in New York City

In the mid- 1930\'s, all trees (greater than 15 cm dbh) in a 16-ha forest on the grounds of The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York, were identified, measured and mapped. In 1985 the forest was resampled and the change in canopy structure and composition determined. Clustering and ordination ...

Forest health fundamentals: forest health relies on forest management

Defining forest health has proven to be something akin to shooting at a moving target. Different groups and different folks often mean different things when they use the term. Attempts to formulate a standard ''one size fits all'' definition have occupied untold hours of bureaucratic, professional ...

Conducting regional environmental assessments: the Southern Appalachian experience

Over the last 25 years states, working partnerships among numerous federal and state agencies and local organizations, have made tremendous strides in cleaning up our environment. The focus of these efforts has been on reducing many sources of terrestrial, water, and air pollution (EPA 1992). But, ...

A national perspective on land use policy alternatives and consequences

This paper is an analysis of the writings and studies concerning a pattern of land development in the United States termed \'\'sprawl.\'\' Sprawl is the spread-out, skipped-over development that characterizes the non-central city metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan areas of the United States. ...

A map is worth a thousand words: satellite views of Georgia track the history of urban sprawl

Satellite views of Georgia track the history of urban sprawl.

Imagining land use futures: applying the California urban futures model

The California Urban Futures Model (or CUF Model) is the first of a new generation of metropolitan planning models designed to help planners, elected officials, and citizen groups create and compare alternative land-use policies. This article explains how the CUF Model works and then demonstrates ...

Illinois life: an environmental testament

This essay was prepared at the request of the Illinois Environmental Council (IEC), an organization that serves as the central voice in the Illinois state capital for state-based environmental groups. To be an environmentalist is not to hold a particular job or belong to a special group. A further ...

The elements of sustainability in urban forestry

For quite some time now people have recognized the value of trees in urban environments. Cities and communities responded to this demand by planting trees wherever and whenever they could afford. Developers were required to participate under simplistic rules like \"two trees for every parking ...

State and regional land use planning: the evolving role of the state

The Traditional Structure of Land Development Regulatory Authority ... When it was found that a local goal was in conformity with the state goals, the plan was acknowledged and the state re-delegated land regulation powers to the jurisdiction. ... The best known component of the Oregon planning ...

Species invasions and deletions: community effects and responses to climate and habitat change

One of humankind\'s greatest influences on the earth\'s biota has been to increase the rate at which species invade non-native habitats, and the rate at which species go extinct at both local and global scales. Biological invasions constitute such a significant ecological problem that several ...

Natural processes

Biological Diversity and Heterogeneity- We had decided to look at an unusual place an-- enormous blowdown in the old-growth forest in the Tionesta Scenic Natural Area in western Pennsylvania. Chris Peterson (at that time a graduate student at Rutgers University) and I were visiting Tionesta Scenic ...

Long-term effects of acid rain: response and recovery of a forest ecosystem

Long-term data from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, suggest that although changes in stream pH have been relatively small, large quantities of calcium and magnesium have been lost from the soil complex and exported by drainage water because of inputs of acid rain and declines ...

Whose water is it? Major water allocation issues facing Georgia

Even though Georgia is one of the \'\'wettest\'\' states in the United States, we are faced with water allocation issues that place us on the cutting edge of eastern water law. This is the result of water conflicts that have emerged among competing water users, both within the state and between ...

Air quality management: a policy perspective

Not until air pollution was determined to be aserious problem in natural areas was the troposheric atmosphere recognized as a natural resource of equal importance to terrestrial and quatic natural resources. Ecosystem managers are beginning to recognize the inextricable connection between good air ...

Threats to U.S. public lands from cumulative hydrologic alterantions outside of their boundaries

U.S. public lands are increasingly threatened by human alteration of hydrologic connections outside their boundaries. Cumulative effects of dams, impoundments, regulated flows, wetlands drainage, and groundwater extraction outside of public land boundaries can play a key role in controlling the ...

Southeast

The ecosystems of the Southeast range from the spruce-fir forests of the highest mountains east of the Mississippi River to the tropical hardwood hammocks of southernmost Florida. A tremendous diversity of ecosystems lies between these extremes: the sawgrass marshes, mangrove forests, and pine ...

Solving the "tragedy": transportation, pollution and regionalism in Atlanta

With a total population of approximately 3.7 million people, the greater Atlanta area is currently the eleventh-largest metropolitan area in the United States by population. With respect to exclusionary practices, wealthier suburban localities in the Atlanta region have intentionally used the lack ...

Rethinking the ozone problem in urban and regional air pollution

Despite more than 20 years of regulatory efforts, concern is widespread that ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, threatens the health of humans, animals, and vegetation. This book discusses how scientific information can be used to develop more effective regulation to control ...

The Southern Appalachian assessment terrestrial technical report

The Southern Appalachian ecosystem is widely recognized as one of the most diverse in a temperate region. The headwaters of nine major rivers lie within the boundaries of the Southern Appalachians, making it a source ofdrinking water for much of the Southeast. The assessment area includes parts ...

The report of the Ecological Society of America committee on the scientific basis for ecosystem management

Ecosystem management is management driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and processes necessary to sustain ecosystem composition, structure, and ...

The preservation of community green space: is Georgia ready to combat sprawl with smart growth?

Absent geographical impediments that limit physical expansion, American cities sprawl. The Committee distinguished \"green space\" from \"community green space\". The Committee outlined tools to protect community green space, putting them into one of three categories: (1 land and conservation ...

The future of the terrestrial communities of the Southeastern United States

Chapters in this volume and the Lowland Communities volume (Martin et al. 1993) included descriptions of the diversity of biotic communities of the southeastern United States. Use, management, and threats to the perpetuation of specific ecosystems have been described. In this final chapter, we ...

Urban tree ordinances

One of the more effective tools used by communities to conserve and improve their urban forests is the tree ordinance. Often they are enacted in response to changes from rapid land development. Tree ordinances range in complexity from simple tree replacement standards to more comprehensive ...

The sunbelt south: industrialization in regional, national, and industrial perspective

The Sunbelt South, consisting of the old Confederacy plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, is a region united by a common racial, cultural, and economic heritage. Variously described as a colony or as the nation\'s number one economic problem, since the Civil War the area has shown a common resolve to ...

Reinventing growth management for the 21st century

Especially in the peripheries of expanding metropolitan areas, public actions to manage development usually aim to extend public infrastructure systems to serve developing areas and structure regulatory regimes that promote real estate investments in outlying \'\'greenfield\'\' areas rather than in ...

Planning communities for the 21st century

The first of its type, this new report by APA presents a report card on the status of state planning enabling statutes and statutory reform efforts in the United States. The report contains a detailed analysis of the planning statutes of all 50 states to determine how well they address ...

Factfinder data sources

 

Estimates of the population of metropolitan areas: annual time series, July 1,1991 to July 1,1996

 

Estate planning for forest landowners: what will become of your timberland?

This book\'s purpose is to provide guidelines and assistance to nonindustrial private woodland owners in applying estate planning techniques to their forest properties. It presents a working knowledge of the Federal estate and gift tax law as it relates to timberland ownership. The unique character ...

Driven to spend: the impact of sprawl on household transportation expenses

Transportation is a big expense for America's families, and it is getting bigger. This study finds that a major factor driving up transportation costs is sprawling development. Sprawl makes driving the only practical form of transportation, and owning several cars per family is expensive, ...

Developers may be asked to shoulder more of Loudoun County's growth costs

Proposal to raise the proffer payment by about 60 percent has alarmed developers. The proposal comes as county officials are struggling to manage explosive growth.

Current Status and Trends in Timber

Severance tax programs currently exist in eight States in the South. These laws have been enacted primarily to encourage better forest management and to provide revenues for a variety of forestry initiatives. In most States, either the severer or the primary processor of forest products is ...

Banking on timber

Rising timber prices give forest landowners opportunities they have never had before. Yet it takes careful planning to capture market highs-- now and in the future.

As the economy grows, the trees fall

Washington is losing much of its distinctive green space to development at a prodigious rate. Vast tracts of farmland and forests are being swallowed up, plowed under, smoothed out and paved over for sprawling residential subdivisions, jumbo retail stores and shopping malls, with roadways and ...

Annual inmigration, outmigration, net migration, and movers from abroad for regions: 1980-1999

 

Has sprawl reduced the black/white suburban homeownership gap?

Black homeownership rates are lower than white homeownership rates. Blacks are snore likely to live in center cities- than whites. As minority incomes rise over time and as housing barriers fall, there is reason to expect that black suburban homeownership rates will rise. This paper uses 1980 and ...

Land-use planning in Virginia: the truth about the Dillion rule

Virginia\'s \"Dillon Rule\" requires all local planning and zoning authority be granted by the state legislature. The Dillon Rule is frequently cited as a major reason for ineffective local planning. However, local officials do have sufficient authority to effectively control suburban sprawl and ...

Land prices and the changing geography of southern row-crop agriculture

Using enterprise budgets for major row-crops and county mean yields, we estimate the returns to land, risk, and management in 12 Southern states for 1992, and compare the results to mean county farm real estate prices reported in the 1992 Census of Agriculture. Similar analysis is also performed ...

Occupational employment projections to 2006

This article compares the 1996-2006 projected changes in the structure of employment at the major occupational group level with the changes that occurred in the previous 10-year period, 1986-1996. It also identifies the detailed occupations that are projected to grow at the fastest rate, as well ...

From cotton belt to sunbelt: Federal policy, economic development, and the transportation of the South, 1938-1980

This is an analysis of the South\'s remarkable odyssey from the economic catastrophe of the 1930s to the Sunbelt of the 1970s, and of the excruciating limits of that emerging prosperity. It is also a study of federal action--of its successes and its failures. By linking the history of the southern ...

Forest resourse economics

Provides the economic background for making and understanding both public and private forest management decisions. Treating forestry as part of our changing economic system, while still recognizing its biological foundations, this book examines the economic problems that arise when managing forests ...

Fiscal costs and public safety risks of low-density residential development on farmland: findings from three diverse locations on the urban fringe of the Chicago metro area

In a unique study, researchers from Northern Illinois University and American Farmland Trust found that scatter development in the Chicago suburbs is often subsidized by those living in adjoining municipalities. Furthermore, for many living in these far flung houses and subdivisions, the emergency ...

About TPL

Land conservation is central to TPL\'s mission. Founded in 1972, the Trust for Public Land is the only national nonprofit working wxclusively to protect land for human enjoyment and well-being. TPL helps conserve land for recreation and spiritual nourishment and to improve the health and quality of ...

A change in death and taxes?: debating the options for an estate-tax overhaul

Discusses the history of estate taxes in the United States and addresses four ways estate-tax reform could pan out.

Impacts of Florida's Growth Management Act on housing prices and affordability:Questions for statewide smart growth policies

This paper presents research on the impacts of Florida's Growth Management Act on housing prices and housing affordability. The act, adopted in 1985, sought to preserve the state's environmental resources and reduce urban sprawl. It included measures to encourage compact urban development and ...

The emerging Federal role in growth management

\"Targeted at the suburbs, where fifty percent of the nation\'s population now resides, the Clinton-Gore Livability Agenda (the Livability Agenda) for the twenty-first century includes more than $10 billion in incentive programs for localities to preserve green space, ease traffic congestion, and ...

Tax policy and sustainable forestry in Georgia

Issues in sustainability and property taxation, preferential tax treatment of timberland in Georgia, impacts on industrial timberland, fiscal impacts, and conclusions and areas for future research are addressed.

Suburban budgeters sound a red alert as needs rise and revenue falls

The Washington area\'s slowing economy and continuing pressure to spend money on schools have left the area\'s two largest jurisdictions in their most serious financial bind since the recession five years ago.

State of the south 2000

State of the South 2000 analyzes how developments related to globalization are affecting Southerners and the Southern economy. The report discusses trends in business mix changes, trade, foreign direct investment,occupational mix changes, immigration, and workforce readiness. We explore the ...

Sprawl: the dark side of the American dream

The consequences of decades of unplanned, rapid growth and poor land-use management are evident all across America: increased traffic congestion, longer commutes, increased dependence on fossil fuels, crowded schools, worsening air and water pollution, lost open space and wetlands, ...

Moving beyond sprawl: toward a broader metropolitan agenda

In the past few years, widespread frustration with sprawling development patterns has precipitated an explosion in metropolitan thinking and action across the United States. A new policy language --\"smart growth,\" \"livable communities,\" \"metropolitanism,\" \"sustainable development\" --has ...

Moving beyond sprawl: the challenge for metropolitan Atlanta

This report attempts to synthesize this considerable body of research in order to show how the trends documented by scholars relate to one another. It seeks to make scholarly findings more accessible to local, state, and national decision-makers, and it is intended to challenge these ...

Modeling and predicting future urban growth in the Charleston area

This growth projection study builds upon another study completed by the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments(BCD COG), the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. That study investigated urban growth in the greater Charleston ...

Losing ground to sprawl? Density trends in metropolitan America

This paper tracks density change in urban land over the past two decades. Density is a key measure of metropolitan growth patterns. The paper follows density change by county, region of the country, and metropolitan area. Nationwide urban densities-measured by persons per urban acre-dropped ...

Livability and affordability: Open space - preservation and land supply

This research follows on the success of 1998 state ballot initiatives to preserve open space. Did the voters approve sweeping new programs? How much land is being acquired? Will these acquisitions impact land supply in metropolitan housing markets? A national scan of initiatives shows significant ...

Landowner's management and conservation goals

Conservation easements are one of the most frequently used tools for protecting land in the U.S. A conservation easement is a legal agreement that prohibits or limits certain kinds of development on the land while allowing the landowner to continue to own it, to live on it, and to use it. It allows ...

Trees, cities and sprawl; CITYgreen software

American Forests is pleased to announce the release of CITYgreen 4.0. The software is now easier to use and offers more powerful modeling capabilities compare economic benefits of various planning scenarios. When trees reduce summer energy consumption,power plants burn less fossil fuel and emit ...

Smart growth: myth and fact

While many individuals and communities recognize the value and benefits of growth, often they are troubled by its unintentional consequences Recognizing that conventional planning and development approaches are not effectively addressing growing traffic congestion and greater losses of open space, ...

Saving open spaces: public support for farmland protection

In urban areas across the nation, those who wish to protect farmland and other open spaces from scatter development have waged battle against theforces that create urban sprawl. This study attempts to discern precisely what it is that residents living on the fringe of suburbia value about the ...

The impact of recent chages in State and Federal death tax laws on private nonindustrial forest estates in the south.

The Federal Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 has significantly influenced the intergenerational transfer of assets. There have also been many changes since 1980 in the death tax statutes of the southern states. Both developments have important implications for private woodland estates. This ...

Urban vegetational change as an indicator of demographic trends in cities: The case of Detroit

Urban vegetation impinges upon the physical environment by positively enhancing the microclimate and air and water quality. On the other hand, changes to the physical environment as well as the socioeconomic conditions of urban dwellers affect the health of urban vegetation and species abundance ...

Reconfiguring the edge city: The use of ecological design parameters in defining the form of community

Suburban development in the Greater Vancouver Region of British Columbia, as with edge-city development elsewhere in North America, continues to erode forest and farm, disrupt hydrological patterns, and weaken the overall ecological integrity of the region. Fragmented landscapes and equally ...

Protecting Residences from Wildfires: A guide for homeowners, lawmakers, and planners

This report summarizes information on procedures for reducing losses of residences and other structures from wildfires. It outlines the problem of protecting homes from such fires, and proposes recommendations and standards. The Proposed Standards are proposals for the technically best solutions. ...

Preliminary impact of local government forestry-related ordinances affecting harvesting in the Eastern United States

In three northeastern and three southern states 748 loggers and consultants were surveyed. In the Northeast; the importance of regulation is limited by low levels of forest activity and small forested acreage. But in the South, large timber acreage and active markets magnified the importance of ...

Policy implications of timberland loss, fragmentation, and urbanization in Georgia and the Southeast

Timberland in metro areas (MSAs) in the Southeast declined by over a million acres during the 1980s, and now accounts for 28 million acres, or 26 percent of the region's total. Marked differences exist between metro and non-metro timberland, in terms of acreage change, values, CRP tree planting, ...

Financial analysis of the 1991 Loudoun County budget: Comparison of taxes paid and services received by various sectors of the community

This analysis of the 1991 Loudoun County budget constructs a 1991 income and expenditures statement of county funds divided into three land use sectors: residential, commercial, and agricultural (which includes open space). It is designed to permit the comparison of revenues received by the county ...

Effects of settlement and fire suppression on landscape structure

Natural landscapes subject to disturbances have a patchy structure that is important to many species living in these landscapes. This structure may be modified when the disturbance regime is altered by either climatic change or human influences (e.g., fire suppression), yet little is known about ...

Economic values of wildlife and open space amenities

Open space, including farm, forest and range land, is playing an increasingly important role in rural Western economies. However, this has shifted from its traditional role of providing resources for extraction and export, to its new role in supporting a high quality of life that is driving both ...

Economic valuation of urban open-space resources

Evaluating the benefits of urban open space in dollars always has been difficult. We conducted a benefit/cost analysis of four urban parks in Worcester, Massachusetts. External benefits--those produced by a park on its surroundings--were valued by explaining the effects of the parks on surrounding ...