ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effect that social capital has on environmental quality. Managing ecosystem services carefully to insure that current and future generations meet their basic needs is the main objective of sustainable development. It is important to note that The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) initiative categorizes ecosystem services slightly differently than the Millennium Assessment with major categories in Provisioning services, Regulating services, Habitat or supporting services, and Cultural services. Using ecological boundaries to identify the study region as all counties east of the Mississippi River of the United States the research discussed here is a regional, cross-sectional analysis. The chapter focuses on examining social capital hotspots in the relationship of land cover change by using spatial regression methods. The vector of social ecological system measures appears to have a different geographic distribution than the social capital measurement.
