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Past Research 1996-2002 P-IB. Human-caused land cover change during the last half-century Summary: Humans have become the single largest disturbance factor in most landscapes, altering more vegetation and moving more soil than natural biotic and physical processes combined. The primary human disturbances in the southern Appalachians are forest harvesting for wood products and land conversion to agricultural or urban/suburban land uses. We hypothesize that the frequency, intensity, and extent of these two types of disturbance have changed over the last 50 years, due to both physical/biotic conditions and to policies, politics, and laws established during this time period. Furthermore, impacts of these changes in land-use cascade through both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the southern Appalachians. Land-use change data are crucial for developing and validating socio-economic models of factors causing land-use change, but also provide key sampling frames and data for other projects, including research on carbon, nutrient, and water cycles, terrestrial ecosystem fragmentation and biotic diversity, and aquatic ecosystem response to disturbance. We have three objectives: Previous Research on Topic (Literature Search)Metadata: |