ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a variety of ways to minimize conflicts in the transitional zone called the urban forest interface. It focuses on the Development, Conversion, Modified Practice and Non-Industrial Forest Parcelization Zones. Each of these zones is discussed by highlighting the problems, issues, and opportunities within each zone. The zones, as arrayed along the continuum, suggest a decreasing degree of urban encroachment as one moves along the continuum. The conventional view of the urban forest interface is two traditional land uses occurring near or adjacent to one another—forest use and urban development. Several important factors illustrate how the urban forest interface of the 1990s differs from earlier urban encroachments into wildland settings. Land use decisions are guided by different and more complex laws and regulations. The many major environmental and land use laws of the late 1960s and early 1970s reflect society's attitude toward the use of land and natural resources in general, and problems on the interface in particular.
