ABSTRACT
Protected lands such as parks, recreational areas, greenways, trails are among important components of conservation efforts in metropolitan regions (e.g., Trzyna 2001; Robinson et al. 2005) and suburban settings (e.g., Radeloff et al. 2005). Conservation and management decisions require information from all aspects of human dimensions and ecosystem concerns (e.g., Gobster and Westphal 2004). During the past few decades, suburban sprawl has dominated the growth of nearly all American metropolitan areas (Johnson 2001). Suburban sprawl, understood as a pattern of low-density development reinforced by a strict separation of land uses, is one of the main forces driving land-cover change. Suburban sprawl often encroaches both on agricultural land and on natural areas for residential and retail development. A recent study reported that 1.4 million hectares of open space was
CONTENTS
6.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 111 6.2 Chicago Wilderness: A Case Study in the Metropolitan Area ............ 112
6.2.1 About Chicago Wilderness ........................................................... 112 6.2.2 Data and Information Extraction ................................................ 113 6.2.3 Results ............................................................................................. 116 6.2.4 Discussion ....................................................................................... 118
6.3 National Parks in Urban and Suburban Areas ...................................... 121 6.3.1 Data and Information Extraction ................................................ 122 6.3.2 Results ............................................................................................. 124 6.3.3 Discussion ....................................................................................... 124
6.4 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................. 126 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 128 References ............................................................................................................. 128
lost to urban sprawl in the United States from 1990 to 2000 (McDonald et al. 2010). Housing growth and its environmental effects pose major conservation challenges (Radeloff et al. 2005). Urban sprawl fragments habitats, isolates populations, and is among the most important human activity stressors reshaping natural processes and most threatening to the sustainability of ecological communities. This is particularly true for protected areas that are situated in urban and suburban environments.
