United States Department of Agriculture

A Sensitivity Analysis of Forests on the Edge: Housing Development on America's Private Forests United States Department of Agriculture

Publisher Marketing: The original Forests on the Edge report (FOTE 1) indicated that 44.2 million acres of private forest land was projected to experience substantial increases in residential development in the coming decades. In this study, we examined the sensitivity of the FOTE 1 results to four factors: (1) use of updated private land and forest cover spatial data and a revised model of housing density change, (2) projection of residential development on woodland identified as shrub/scrub land cover, (3) inclusion of very-low-density residential development (i.e., more than 40 acres/ housing unit) in the housing density change categories, and (4) inclusion of additional watersheds in the analysis by changing the screening criteria. The FOTE 1 results were found to be generally stable to the four factors. Use of updated data and a revised model had the most significant impact on the results of FOTE 1. Inclusion of shrub/scrub land cover and modification of the watershed screening criteria yielded minimal changes to the results of FOTE 1. An extensive amount (26 million acres) of very-low-density residential development was projected on private forest land, but inclusion of these acres of change did not appreciably change the FOTE results. However, given the spatial extent of projected very-low-density residential development and its potential implications for ecological processes, additional research examining this type of development and its impact on natural resources is warranted.