Summary
An Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center researcher and North Carolina State University collaborator assessed the threats to family forests in contiguous U.S. by measuring changes in the landscape around them between 2001 and 2011, focusing on forest fragmentation and human interface zones. Their findings, published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, indicate that landscapes containing family forests changed substantially over a relatively short time period. By 2011, 46 percent of family forest land area was in a human interface zone, including 33 percent in agriculture interface zones – areas that have been linked to fire occurrence and the spread of invasive plants. While only 29 percent of family forest area was considered unfragmented in 2011, most of the total unfragmented forest was still privately owned because most forest area is privately owned. The study identified broad areas where family forest conservation could be targeted and leveraged to achieve far-reaching impacts. These areas include the eastern Great Plains steppe and parkland, Midwest broadleaf forest, and California coast, where unfragmented forest is relatively rare, as well as most of the eastern U.S., where family forests dominate the landscape.
