Simulating urbanization scenarios reveals tradeoffs between conservation planning strategies

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.