This document is a progress report to stakeholders of the Landscape Change Integrated Research and Deveopment Program, highlighting the results of research conducted during 1999-2003 to provide policy-relevant information about development-related landscape change in the seven-State Midewest region. Four questions are addressed: How is the landscape changing? Our research has helped to identify the critical patterns and trends of changes in the Midwest region over recent decades. Detailed information on housing density and land cover and county data on forest characteristics, plants and animals, and human demographics have been organized in a Web-based atlas available to researchers, planners, and decisionmakers. Special studies on the other critical patterns such as ozone concentrations help us understand trends and linkages within and beyond the region. What drives landscape change? Physical, biological, social, and economic factors combine in complex ways to draw people to locations within the region not only to visit, but also increasingly to build primary residences and second homes. This amenity migrations has traditionally centered on the riparian areas within the region but is increasingly spreading to forest and agricultural areas of the urban and rural fringe. What are the consequences of landscape change? Forest parcelization and low-density development patterns are affecting the people and ecosystems of the region. At the urban fringe, fragmentation of forest cover is resulting in reductions in songbird populations and the decline in health of oak ecosystems. There also are concerns in more rural areas, such as economic impacts to the forest industry as increasing housing density results in fewer timber removals. Concerns about sprawl among metropolitan residents have increased across the Midwest region, with the perceived effects on environmental quality, farmland and open-space protection, traffic, and other problems varying in intensity from city to city. What do we do about it? Strategies for avoiding, minimizing, or ameliorating the negative effects of landscape change include policies aimed at protecting open space by regulating land use, providing incentives to landowners and developers, and educating homeowners. The effectiveness of many open-space protection strategies has not been tested, but approaches that integrate multiple tools and authorities have the highest potential for succeeding. Understanding the goals of planners and residents can go far to achieve long-term, effective, and equitable guidelines for landscape change. In the highlighted studies and in other efforts within and outside the region, the North Central Research Station is contributing to the knowledge base needed to discover, understand, and make reasoned decisions about development-related landscape change. Stakeholder participation is needed to help guide the future course of work in this critical area.
