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This project looks at the impacts of urban growth and land use change on metrics of biodiversity. It
seeks to understand the connections between urban sprawl and fragmenting
habitat through a coordinated field and modeling effort. The research goal is to predict
how land use change will affect biodiversity across Vermont at multiple spatial and temporal
scales, and, based on those results, to assess the implications for
biodiversity of current and alternative land use policies. Coordinated assessments
of biodiversityacross Vermont are being used to build predictive models of occurrence for a
variety of taxa. Meanwhile, urban growth for Vermont is being simulated under a variety of policy scenarios,
including no change in current policies. For each policy scenario, the corresponding impact on biodiversity will
be quantified. Finally, spatial optimization methods will be used to identify land use patterns that are
optimal for conserving an array of species, subject to socio-economic
constraints. The proposed research will result in a decision-making tool that informs stakeholders of how projected
land use change scenarios will likely affect different levels of
biodiversity. This tool will allow policies to be driven by their potential effects on biodiversity, thereby
permitting proactive land use planning that maximizes conservation value in
this region. My role in the project is creating the urban growth/land use
change simulation and mapping the resulting fragmentation of the landscape. The
model we will use is UrbanSim, an economically-based dynamic disequilibrium
model that allows for prediction under a variety of policy scenarios.
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