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Current Research
2002-2008 C-IC2. Human-disturbance: Analyses of Land-use Choices Human land-use choices are the primary disturbance on private lands, which cover approximately 55% of our study region. Typical studies evaluate land use choice probabilities as a function of physical measures of land quality (e.g., the Von Thünen model, Samuelson 1983, the Central Business District model, Capozza and Helsley 1989), but must assume that social variables remain constant across the landscape. Historical accounts of land use in the southern Appalachian Mountains (e.g., Silver 1990, Salstrom 1994, Davis 2000) are similarly incomplete because they seldom quantify impacts across time or evaluate their heterogeneity across space. A probabilistic model of land-use choice across the region will be derived for each decade from 1800 to the present by using land use and property records, oral histories, geneology, population and agricultural census records, and remote imagery. The following questions will be
addressed:
Investigators |