The South is the fastest growing region in the Nation.  Current estimates place population growth at 815,000 individuals annually.  By 2020, over 12 million acres of forestlands are projected to be lost to growth-induced urban land-uses. The consequences of this land use change will have far reaching consequences for the sustainability of southern forests and community well-being.  General research areas that we address related to urban effects include:

• How landscape change alters natural environments, disturbance regimes, and ecosystem services.  We address critical knowledge gaps related to how urbanization alters landscapes and ecosystem patterns and processes, and how to better predict effects.
• Linkages among ecological and social components of urban and urbanizing landscapes.  We assess how ecological and social components are interrelated to enhance best management practices for sustaining the urban forest. 

• How the urban forest (vegetation on both public and private lands) responds to the urban environment and the urbanization process, and how this response affects the availability of ecosystem goods and services.  By understanding how the altered environments of urban landscapes directly and indirectly affect urban forest and its goods and services, policy makers and resource managers can better manage the resource for human benefit.  This research also examines how the changing availability of ecosystem goods and services effects the landscape, region and national scale, and what those effects mean from a resource management and policy perspective.

Some specific research projects conducted by unit scientists and partners include:

• Analysis of Urbanization Effects on Forest Vegetation -

  This research project will help to develop an integrated approach to monitoring changes from urbanization to ecological and social systems in the Florida Panhandle. From this work we will develop best management practices that promote the positive attributes of urbanization while minimizing its negative effects.  The protocols developed with this research can be used in other regions to assess urban effects. Research is conducted in partnership with Auburn University’s Center for Forest Sustainability.

• Urbanization Effects, Ecosystem Structure, and Function in Florida - The primary objective of this project is to monitor how the urban forest changes over time in a small urban city in the South. The project uses the protocol developed for the Urban Forest Effects model (UFORE) to determine species composition, diameter distribution, tree health, species diversity, and native and non-native species distribution. 

• San Juan Bay Estuary Watershed Reinventory and Supplemental Sampling - This study aims to increase our knowledge about how tropical urban forests differ structually and compositionally from non-tropical urban forests. This study will also look at the vegetation dynamics in tropical cities.
• Evaluation of Litter Dynamics Across an Urban-Rural Gradient in the Florida Panhandle - This study is evaluating decomposition across different land uses in the Florida Panhandle, assessing how decomposition varies across natural forests and plantation, and identifying differences in decomposition rates across an array of urban conditions.