@article{koch_dorning_van berkel_beck_sanchez_shashidharan_smart_zhang_smith_meentemeyer_et al._2019, title={Modeling landowner interactions and development patterns at the urban fringe}, volume={182}, ISSN={["1872-6062"]}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.09.023}, DOI={10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.09.023}, abstractNote={Population growth and unrestricted development policies are driving low-density urbanization and fragmentation of peri-urban landscapes across North America. While private individuals own most undeveloped land, little is known about how their decision-making processes shape landscape-scale patterns of urbanization over time. We introduce a hybrid agent-based modeling (ABM) – cellular automata (CA) modeling approach, developed for analyzing dynamic feedbacks between landowners’ decisions to sell their land for development, and resulting patterns of landscape fragmentation. Our modeling approach builds on existing conceptual frameworks in land systems modeling by integrating an ABM into an established grid-based land-change model – FUTURES. The decision-making process within the ABM involves landowner agents whose decision to sell their land to developers is a function of heterogeneous preferences and peer-influences (i.e., spatial neighborhood relationships). Simulating landowners’ decision to sell allows an operational link between the ABM and the CA module. To test our hybrid ABM-CA approach, we used empirical data for a rapidly growing region in North Carolina for parameterization. We conducted a sensitivity analysis focusing on the two most relevant parameters—spatial actor distribution and peer-influence intensity—and evaluated the dynamic behavior of the model simulations. The simulation results indicate different peer-influence intensities lead to variable landscape fragmentation patterns, suggesting patterns of spatial interaction among landowners indirectly affect landscape-scale patterns of urbanization and the fragmentation of undeveloped forest and farmland.}, journal={LANDSCAPE AND URBAN PLANNING}, author={Koch, Jennifer and Dorning, Monica A. and Van Berkel, Derek B. and Beck, Scott M. and Sanchez, Georgina M. and Shashidharan, Ashwin and Smart, Lindsey S. and Zhang, Qiang and Smith, Jordan W. and Meentemeyer, Ross K. and et al.}, year={2019}, month={Feb}, pages={101–113} }
 @article{dorning_smith_shoemaker_meentemeyer_2015, title={Changing decisions in a changing landscape: How might forest owners In an urbanizing region respond to emerging bioenergy markets?}, volume={49}, ISSN={["1873-5754"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.06.020}, abstractNote={The global bioenergy market has considerable impacts on local land use patterns, including landscapes in the Southeastern United States where increased demand for bioenergy feedstocks in the form of woody biomass is likely to affect the management and availability of forest resources. Despite extensive research investigating the productivity and impacts of different bioenergy feedstocks, relatively few studies have assessed the preferences of private landowners, who control the majority of forests in the eastern U.S., to harvest biomass for the bioenergy market. To better understand contingent behaviors given emerging biomass markets, we administered a stated preference experiment to private forest owners in the rapidly urbanizing Charlotte Metropolitan region. Respondents indicated their preferences for harvesting woody biomass under a set of hypothetical market-based scenarios with varying forest management plans and levels of economic return. Our analytical framework also incorporated data from a previously-administered revealed preference survey and spatially-explicit remote sensing data, enabling us to analyze how individuals’ ownership characteristics, their emotional connection the forests they manage, and the spatial patterns of nearby land uses, influence willingness to grow bioenergy feedstocks. We found conditional support for feedstock production, even among woodland owners with no history of active management. Landowners preferred higher economic returns for each management plan. However low-intensity harvest options were always preferred to more intensive management alternatives regardless of economic return, suggesting that these landowners may be more strongly motivated by aesthetic or quality-of-life concerns than feedstock revenues. Our analysis indicated preferences were dependent upon individual and environmental characteristics, with younger, more rural landowners significantly more interested in growing feedstocks relative to their older and more urban counterparts. While this study focuses on one small sample of urban forest owners, our results do suggest that policy makers and resource managers can better inform stand-level decision-making by understanding how feedstock production preferences vary across populations.}, journal={LAND USE POLICY}, author={Dorning, Monica A. and Smith, Jordan W. and Shoemaker, Douglas A. and Meentemeyer, Ross K.}, year={2015}, month={Dec}, pages={1–10} }
 @article{meentemeyer_dorning_vogler_schmidt_garbelotto_2015, title={Citizen science helps predict risk of emerging infectious disease}, volume={13}, ISSN={["1540-9309"]}, DOI={10.1890/140299}, abstractNote={Engaging citizen scientists is becoming an increasingly popular technique for collecting large amounts of ecological data while also creating an avenue for outreach and public support for research. Here we describe a unique study, in which citizen scientists played a key role in the spatial prediction of an emerging infectious disease. The yearly citizen-science program called “Sudden Oak Death (SOD) Blitz” engages and educates volunteers in detecting the causal pathogen during peak windows of seasonal disease expression. We used these data – many of which were collected from under-sampled urban ecosystems – to develop predictive maps of disease risk and to inform stakeholders on where they should prioritize management efforts. We found that continuing the SOD Blitz program over 6 consecutive years improved our understanding of disease dynamics and increased the accuracy of our predictive models. We also found that self-identified non-professionals were just as capable of detecting the disease as were pro...}, number={4}, journal={FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT}, author={Meentemeyer, Ross K. and Dorning, Monica A. and Vogler, John B. and Schmidt, Douglas and Garbelotto, Matteo}, year={2015}, month={May}, pages={189–194} }
 @article{dorning_koch_shoemaker_meentemeyer_2015, title={Simulating urbanization scenarios reveals tradeoffs between conservation planning strategies}, volume={136}, ISSN={["1872-6062"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.landurbplan.2014.11.011}, abstractNote={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.}, journal={LANDSCAPE AND URBAN PLANNING}, author={Dorning, Monica A. and Koch, Jennifer and Shoemaker, Douglas A. and Meentemeyer, Ross K.}, year={2015}, month={Apr}, pages={28–39} }
 @article{bendor_shoemaker_thill_dorning_meentemeyer_2014, title={A mixed-methods analysis of social-ecological feedbacks between urbanization and forest persistence}, volume={19}, ISSN={["1708-3087"]}, DOI={10.5751/es-06508-190303}, abstractNote={BenDor, T., D. A. Shoemaker, J.-C. Thill, M. A. Dorning, and R. K. Meentemeyer. 2014. A mixed-methods analysis of social-ecological feedbacks between urbanization and forest persistence. Ecology and Society 19(3): 3. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06508-190303}, number={3}, journal={ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY}, author={BenDor, Todd and Shoemaker, Douglas A. and Thill, Jean-Claude and Dorning, Monica A. and Meentemeyer, Ross K.}, year={2014} }
 @article{meentemeyer_tang_dorning_vogler_cunniffe_shoemaker_2013, title={FUTURES: Multilevel Simulations of Emerging Urban-Rural Landscape Structure Using a Stochastic Patch-Growing Algorithm}, volume={103}, ISSN={["1467-8306"]}, DOI={10.1080/00045608.2012.707591}, abstractNote={We present a multilevel modeling framework for simulating the emergence of landscape spatial structure in urbanizing regions using a combination of field-based and object-based representations of land change. The FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation (FUTURES) produces regional projections of landscape patterns using coupled submodels that integrate nonstationary drivers of land change: per capita demand, site suitability, and the spatial structure of conversion events. Patches of land change events are simulated as discrete spatial objects using a stochastic region-growing algorithm that aggregates cell-level transitions based on empirical estimation of parameters that control the size, shape, and dispersion of patch growth. At each time step, newly constructed patches reciprocally influence further growth, which agglomerates over time to produce patterns of urban form and landscape fragmentation. Multilevel structure in each submodel allows drivers of land change to vary in space (e.g., by jurisdiction), rather than assuming spatial stationarity across a heterogeneous region. We applied FUTURES to simulate land development dynamics in the rapidly expanding metropolitan region of Charlotte, North Carolina, between 1996 and 2030, and evaluated spatial variation in model outcomes along an urban–rural continuum, including assessments of cell- and patch-based correctness and error. Simulation experiments reveal that changes in per capita land consumption and parameters controlling the distribution of development affect the emergent spatial structure of forests and farmlands with unique and sometimes counterintuitive outcomes.}, number={4}, journal={ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS}, author={Meentemeyer, Ross K. and Tang, Wenwu and Dorning, Monica A. and Vogler, John B. and Cunniffe, Nik J. and Shoemaker, Douglas A.}, year={2013}, month={Jul}, pages={785–807} }