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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2018
- Title: Applying the Wildlands and Woodlands vision to the Pioneer Valley
- Author: Jonathan R Hamilton (Harvard University)
- Abstract:
To combat the deleterious effects of ongoing forest loss in New England, the Wildlands and Woodlands (W&W) initiative was developed to envision a forested landscape that supports farmlands and communities far more than an unplanned future would. Problematically, W&W applies to all of New England at once, leaving individual sub-regions questioning how they can contribute. To this end, I have started the process of creating a more specific, regional vision for the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts for the use of Kestrel Land Trust. Using ArcGIS to analyze data such as protected open space layers acquired from the Harvard Forest, I generated a set of maps that imagine several distributions of forests and farmland within the Valley, each favoring a certain scenario of either increased forests or farmlands. By overlaying these visions, I then developed a scenario comparable to W&W. This combined map envisages the Pioneer Valley as 14% urban, 60-77% forested, 5-22% farmland, and 5% water/wetland in 2060, with at least the lower bounds (60% and 5%, respectively) for forest and farmland conserved. In running this analysis, an advancement toward achieving a W&W-influenced New England was made. That is, this vision delineated the conservation priorities for a manageable sub-region of New England. In creating more bottom-up visions like this, land trusts including Kestrel and regional conservation partnerships can better move toward accomplishing the objectives set out by Wildlands and Woodlands for the benefit of all who call New England home.
- Research Category: Conservation and Management; Group Projects
