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People and Forests

Primary Question (chapter 6): How have land uses changed in the South, and how might changes in the future affect the area of forests?

Related Question (chapter 1): What are the history, status, and projected future of terrestrial wildlife habitat types and species in the South?

Conversion of forests to developed uses is associated with population growth. Substantial population and income growth is forecast for about a third of the region’s counties. Urbanization will be concentrated in three large areas: the Southern Appalachian Piedmont stretching from Raleigh/Durham, NC, through Atlanta, GA; the Atlantic Coast from the Carolinas through Florida, and a portion of the gulf coast centered on Mobile Bay. Other centers of expanding urbanization are around Nashville, TN, and Knoxville, TN, and in northern and eastern Virginia (fig. 19).

Many developed areas of the South still retain much forest cover. However, these forests are becoming fragmented, suggesting that they do not have the potential to provide the same ecological and economic values as forests in a rural setting. One way to gauge fragmentation is to examine the share of land in interior or unfragmented forest (that is, a forest area that is completely surrounded by other forest areas). A measure of forest cover developed from satellite imagery shows that interior forest is especially scarce in the developing areas mentioned above (chapter 6, fig. 20).

The influence of urban areas on forests extends outward into surrounding rural areas. Areas influenced by urban development will likely experience growing human populations and changes in the values and uses of forests. For example, forest services such as recreation and microclimate moderation may become more highly valued in an urbanizing area. Timber management, on the other hand, is generally inversely correlated with population density. Timber harvesting near urban areas will likely decrease substantially after the harvests associated with land clearing and conversions (chapter 6).

One measure of human presence in the vicinity of forests is forest population density (FPD), which is the number of people per square mile (ppsm) of forest within a county. The index ranges from about 20 ppsm in very rural areas of the South to more than 1,000 in urbanized areas (we consider 1,000 ppsm a “saturated” condition). figure 21 shows that, as expected, FPD is highest in the vicinity of large cities. Florida has the highest concentration of these saturated areas, reflecting a very high population density through much of its peninsula and low forest cover in the southern half of the State. Three other areas along interstate highway corridors had high FPD values in 1992: the I-85 corridor from Raleigh/Durham, NC, to Atlanta, GA, the I-65 corridor from Birmingham, AL, to Nashville, TN, and the I-81 corridor from Chattanooga, TN, to Wytheville, VA. At the periphery of the region in northern Kentucky and Virginia and along the gulf coast, FPDs were also relatively high in 1992.

Forecasts of changes in FPDs from 1992 to 2020 indicate continued outward growth of the urban centers of the South. figure 22 shows a characteristic “doughnut” pattern of growth in FPD around Atlanta, GA, Nashville, TN, and Charlotte, NC. Expansion in FPD is also forecast to be concentrated in Atlantic Coastal areas of South Carolina and Florida and along the gulf coast. A similar pattern is also evident around the concentration of public land in the Southern Appalachians.