Publications

@article{Pickard2017b,
title = {Comparing quantity, allocation and configuration accuracy of multiple land change models},
author = {Brian R. Pickard and Joshua Gray and Ross K. Meentemeyer},
url = {http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/6/3/52/htm},
doi = {10.3390/land6030052},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-08-15},
journal = {Land},
volume = {6},
number = {3},
pages = {52},
abstract = {The growing numbers of land change models makes it difficult to select a model at the beginning of an analysis, and is often arbitrary and at the researcher’s discretion. How to select a model at the beginning of an analysis, when multiple are suitable, represents a critical research gap currently understudied, where trade-offs of choosing one model over another are often unknown. Repeatable methods are needed to conduct cross-model comparisons to understand the trade-offs among models when the same calibration and validation data are used. Several methods to assess accuracy have been proposed that emphasize quantity and allocation, while overlooking the accuracy with which a model simulates the spatial configuration (e.g., size and shape) of map categories across landscapes. We compared the quantity, allocation, and configuration accuracy of four inductive pattern-based spatial allocation land change models (SLEUTH, GEOMOD, Land Change Modeler (LCM), and FUTURES). We simulated urban development with each model using identical input data from ten counties surrounding the growing region of Charlotte, North Carolina. Maintaining the same input data, such as land cover, drivers of change, and projected quantity of change, reduces differences in model inputs and allows for focus on trade-offs in different types of model accuracy. Results suggest that these four land change models produce representations of urban development with substantial variance, where some models may better simulate quantity and allocation at the trade-off of configuration accuracy, and vice versa. Trade-offs in accuracy exist with respect to the amount, spatial allocation, and landscape configuration of each model. This comparison exercise illustrates the range of accuracies for these models, and demonstrates the need to consider all three types of accuracy when assessing land change model’s projections.},
keywords = {accuracy, land change, modeling, urbanization},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@article{Smith2017b,
title = {Bayesian methods to estimate urban growth potential},
author = {Jordan Smith and Lindsey S. Smart and Monica A. Dorning and Lauren Nicole Dupéy and Andréanne Méley and Ross K. Meentemeyer},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.03.004},
doi = {10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.03.004},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-07-01},
journal = {Landscape and Urban Planning},
volume = {163},
pages = {1-16},
abstract = {Urban growth often influences the production of ecosystem services. The impacts of urbanization on landscapes can subsequently affect landowners’ perceptions, values and decisions regarding their land. Within land-use and land-change research, very few models of dynamic landscape-scale processes like urbanization incorporate empirically-grounded landowner decision-making processes. Very little attention has focused on the heterogeneous decision-making processes that aggregate to influence broader-scale patterns of urbanization. We examine the land-use tradeoffs faced by individual landowners in one of the United States’ most rapidly urbanizing regions − the urban area surrounding Charlotte, North Carolina. We focus on the land-use decisions of non-industrial private forest owners located across the region’s development gradient. A discrete choice experiment is used to determine the critical factors influencing individual forest owners’ intent to sell their undeveloped properties across a series of experimentally varied scenarios of urban growth. Data are analyzed using a hierarchical Bayesian approach. The estimates derived from the survey data are used to modify a spatially-explicit trend-based urban development potential model, derived from remotely-sensed imagery and observed changes in the region’s socioeconomic and infrastructural characteristics between 2000 and 2011. This modeling approach combines the theoretical underpinnings of behavioral economics with spatiotemporal data describing a region’s historical development patterns. By integrating empirical social preference data into spatially-explicit urban growth models, we begin to more realistically capture processes as well as patterns that drive the location, magnitude and rates of urban growth.},
keywords = {Bayesian model, land change, stated preference, urbanization},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@article{Smith2017,
title = {Payments for carbon storage to alleviate development pressure in a rapidly urbanizing region},
author = {Jordan Smith and Monica Dorning and Douglas A. Shoemaker and Andréanne Méley and Lauren Nicole Dupéy and Ross K. Meentemeyer},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5849/FS-2016-084R1},
doi = {10.5849/FS-2016-084R1},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-05},
journal = {Forest Science},
volume = {63},
number = {3},
pages = {270-282},
abstract = {The purpose of this study was to determine individuals' willingness to enroll in voluntary payments for carbon sequestration programs through the use of a discrete choice experiment delivered to forest owners living in the rapidly urbanizing region surrounding Charlotte, North Carolina. We examined forest owners' willingness to enroll in payments for carbon sequestration policies under different levels of financial incentives (annual revenue), different contract lengths, and different program administrators (e.g., private companies versus a state or federal agency). We also examined the influence forest owners' sense of place had on their willingness to enroll in hypothetical programs. Our results showed a high level of ambivalence toward participating in payments for carbon sequestration programs. However, both financial incentives and contract lengths significantly influenced forest owners' intent to enroll. Neither program administration nor forest owners' sense of place influenced intent to enroll. Although our analyses indicated that payments from carbon sequestration programs are not currently competitive with the monetary returns expected from timber harvest or property sales, certain forest owners might see payments for carbon sequestration programs as a viable option for offsetting increasing tax costs as development encroaches and property values rise.

},
keywords = {payments for ecosystem services, stated preference, urbanization},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@article{Dorning2015,
title = {Simulating urbanization scenarios reveals tradeoffs between conservation planning strategies},
author = {Monica A. Dorning and Jennifer Koch and Douglas A. Shoemaker and Ross K. Meentemeyer},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204614002710},
doi = {10.1016/j.landurbplan.2014.11.011},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-04-01},
journal = {Landscape and Urban Planning},
volume = {136},
pages = {28-39},
abstract = {Land that is of great value for conservation can also be highly suitable for human use, resulting in competition between urban development and the protection of natural resources. To assess the effectiveness of proposed regional land conservation strategies in the context of rapid urbanization, we measured the impacts of simulated development patterns on two distinct conservation goals: protecting priority natural resources and limiting landscape fragmentation. Using a stochastic, patch-based land change model (FUTURES) we projected urbanization in the North Carolina Piedmont according to status quo trends and several conservation-planning strategies, including constraints on the spatial distribution of development, encouraging infill, and increasing development density. This approach allows simulation of population-driven land consumption without excluding the possibility of development, even in areas of high conservation value. We found that if current trends continue, new development will consume 11% of priority resource lands, 21% of forested land, and 14% of farmlands regionally by 2032. We also found that no single conservation strategy was optimal for achieving both conservation goals. For example, strategies that excluded development from priority areas caused increased fragmentation of forests and farmlands, while infill strategies increased loss of priority resources proximal to urban areas. Exploration of these land change scenarios not only confirmed that a failure to act is likely to result in irreconcilable losses to a conservation network, but that all conservation plans are not equivalent in effect, highlighting the importance of analyzing tradeoffs between alternative conservation planning approaches.},
keywords = {conservation, land change, urbanization},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@article{BenDor2014,
title = {A mixed-methods analysis of social-ecological feedbacks between urbanization and forest persistence},
author = {Todd BenDor and Douglas A. Shoemaker and Jean-Claude Thill and Monica A. Dorning and Ross K. Meentemeyer},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06508-190303},
doi = {10.5751/ES-06508-190303},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-09-01},
journal = {Ecology and Society},
volume = {19},
number = {3},
pages = {3},
abstract = {We examined how social-ecological factors in the land-change decision-making process influenced neighboring decisions and trajectories of alternative landscape ecologies. We decomposed individual landowner decisions to conserve or develop forests in the rapidly growing Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S. region, exposing and quantifying the effects of forest quality, and social and cultural dynamics. We tested the hypothesis that the intrinsic value of forest resources, e.g., cultural attachment to land, influence woodland owners’ propensity to sell. Data were collected from a sample of urban, nonindustrial private forest (U-NIPF) owners using an individualized survey design that spatially matched land-owner responses to the ecological and timber values of their forest stands. Cluster analysis (n = 126) revealed four woodland owner typologies with widely ranging views on the ecosystem, cultural, and historical values of their forests. Classification tree analysis revealed woodland owners’ willingness to sell was characterized by nonlinear, interactive factors, including sense of place values regarding the retention of native vegetation, the size of forest holdings, their connectedness to nature, ‘pressure’ from surrounding development, and behavioral patterns, such as how often landowners visit their land. Several ecological values and economic factors were not found to figure in the decision to retain forests. Our study design is unique in that we address metropolitan forest persistence across urban-rural and population gradients using a unique individualized survey design that richly contextualizes survey responses. Understanding the interplay between policies and landowner behavior can also help resource managers to better manage and promote forest persistence. Given the region’s paucity of policy tools to manage the type and amount of development, the mosaic of land cover the region currently enjoys is far from stable.},
keywords = {forest persistence, land change, social-ecological feedbacks, tax policy, urban forests, urbanization},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}