From "buffer zones" to country homes...

Development reducing protected area buffers in US...
This is one of those cases in which a research study tells us something that most of us knew intuitively but nonetheless is important for us to hear and consider. Researchers at Colorado State University used GIS to map out protected areas and the undeveloped "buffer zones" surrounding those areas for 1970, 2000, and 2030. I put the word 'buffer zones' in quotes in the preceding sentence because for the most part we don't have official buffer zones surrounding protected areas in the US. The researchers instead mapped out de-facto buffer zones - i.e. undeveloped land surrounding protected areas that can play a similar role (e.g. mitigate edge effects, allow for dynamic ecological processes to occur, serve as corridors, etc).

The researchers found that between 1970 and 2030, the US will have lost about 12% of the protected area "buffer zones" or 45 million hectares (111 million acres) to development. The majority of the newly

developed land is exurban in nature (approximately 97%) as opposed to urban or suburban. I find this statistic particularly frustrating. Exurbia is the fastest form of development in the country and its low density nature means that a relatively small number of people can spread impacts across a huge amount of land.

Conservation Implications...
The results of this study have a couple of important implications. First, many conservation theorists and practitioners have espoused the development of conservation systems made up of core areas and buffer zones surrounding and connecting the cores. These types of protected areas are the standard in many countries though not yet in the United States. As the results of this study suggest, development patterns in the United States may hinder the establishment of such a system. Even without such a system, though, de facto buffer zones - i.e. undeveloped lands surrounding protected areas - are widespread in the US. These areas provide important conservation benefits in complimenting the objectives of protected areas. Yet as this study shows, they are unfortunately shrinking.

Source:	Conservation Biology
Title:	Residential development encroachment on U.S. protected areas
Authors:	a) Alisa Wade and Devid Theobald
	a) Colorado State University