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Needs for Additional Research

The land use forecasting described here was conducted at the county level of resolution, a rather coarse grain. Additional information about the implications for terrestrial ecosystems and water quality and aquatic ecosystems could be developed from analysis at a finer scale. Fine-scale analysis has been conducted for small areas by Wear and Bolstad (1998) and Turner and others (1996). Studies such as these address land use and cover at a cell size as small as 0.09 ha and can therefore provide direct linkage between land use choices and local ecological structure and impacts. Extending this scale of analysis, while expensive, could provide valuable and much more direct insights into the links between human activities and ecological consequences.

Additional work that links social demographics with land use and resource management decisions could provide additional insights into how social change might influence the flow of goods and services from forested ecosystems.