期刊名称：ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
印刷版ISSN：2194-9042
电子版ISSN：2194-9050
出版年度：2002
卷号：XXXIV Part 1
出版社：Copernicus Publications
摘要：Roads, agriculture, and 'sprawl', represent the most prevalent changes in out natural landscapes and cause natural systems to become divided into isolated parts. Research shows that landscapes lose their ecological integrity with increasing fragmentation, which can include the loss of biological diversity, the degradation of water quality and the loss of other important ecological services. Many natural ecosystem types in the southeastern United States have suffered significant losses and degradation. Longleaf pine forests, bottomland hardwoods and wetlands have lost 98%, 78% and 28% percent respectively of their pre-settlement extent in this region. These dwindling natural systems are falling under increased pressure to support a growing human population. By identifying a large scale, systematic regional framework, it is possible to provide a foundation in which protection of the large-scale ecological properties and processes can be optimized for multiple benefits at both the local and regional scale. Of the remaining natural areas in the region, not all are equal in their support of ecosystem services. Critical areas may include wetlands located up stream of drinking water intakes. Other critical areas may be identified as flood protection for a small farming town or riparian buffers to eliminate the need of a sediment filtration system. There are also many areas that have high ecological integrity or high biological diversity, have critical roles in watershed protection, or can provide the only possible linkages between other existing natural areas. After reviewing work produced at the University of Florida (UFL) identifying a green infrastructure for the state of Florida, EPA Region 4 entered into a cooperative agreement with UFL to apply their modeling processes to the Southeast. The Florida Ecological Network delineation process provided the foundation for the SEF by combining a systematic landscape analysis of ecological significance with the identification of critical landscape linkages in a way that can be replicated, enhanced with new data, and applied at different scales
