Threats to Private Forest Lands in the U.S.A.: A Forests on the Edge Study
The Forests on the Edge project, sponsored by the USDA Forest Service, uses geographic information systems to construct and analyze maps depicting threats to the contributions of America's private forest lands. For this study, watersheds across the conterminous United States (U.S.) are evaluated with respect to the amount of their private forest land. Watersheds with at least 10 percent forest land, of which 50 percent is privately owned, are then ranked relative to the contributions of their private forest lands to water quality, timber supply, at-risk species habitat, and interior forest. In addition, threats from housing development, fire, air pollution, and insect pests and disease to private forest land contributions are assessed. Results indicate that private forest lands contributions and threats are concentrated in the Eastern and Southeastern U.S. but are also distributed throughout the north-central, central hardwoods, and Pacific Northwest regions.
- Introduction : America's forest lands contribute in a myriad of ways to the economic, ecological, and social well-being of the Nation.
- Data Layers : All data layers were obtained as or constructed to be nationally consistent and were summarized at the spatial scale of fourth-level watersheds.
- Methods : For each contribution and threat layer, the distribution of watershed index values was determined, and a percentile ranking was assigned to each watershed.
- Results : The results are briefly discussed.
- Conclusions : The FOTE spatial approach to assessing threats to the contributions of private forest lands produces useful, visual information that is relatively easy to obtain.
Encyclopedia ID: p3613
