| Abstract: |
Green infrastructure is a unique approach to promote strategic land conservation and restoration. One of the primary goals of green infrastructure is to maintain natural ecological processes and services by preserving ecological connectivity. However, current trends of land conversion to urban, surburban, and exurban development challenge green infrastructure planning and implementation. We evaluated the Maryland Green Infrastructure by converting it to a network representation, forecasting land conversion using the SLEUTH modeling framework, and assessing potential changes in connectivity to the green infrastructure network. The importance of each hub and corridor in the network was assessed by systematically removing them individually and re-assessing network metrics assuming the loss of that specific link or hub. To forecast land use change, we used the SLEUTH urban growth model and evaluated 3 scenarios: one based on current trends, a “reasonable effort” scenario, and a best case scenario. Spatial patterns of forecasted land-use change were evaluated for each scenario to determine if such land-use change could potentially break green infrastructure links or threaten the integrity of hubs. These results were then incorporated into the network analysis, to ascertain if any of the critical hubs or links corresponded to those expected to be threatened under one of the three land use change scenarios. We show how network models can be combined with forecasting models of land-use change to guide management priorities for the green infrastructure by identifying potential threats to the network due to land use change. |
