Impacts of land-cover change on native species in a Southern Appalachian watershed

Anthropogenic land-cover changes can alter the abundance and spatial pattern of natural habitats. Changes in habitats have consequences for native plant and animal populations. A land-cover change model has been developed for the Little Tennessee River Watershed. In this model, land-cover change is driven by social, economic, and ecological characteristics of the landscape. [The authors] developed a species-impact module to monitor the effects on native species of landscape changes projected by the land-cover change model under different socioeconomic scenarios. The species-impact module utilizes species characteristics, such as habitat needs, area requirements, sensitivity to edge, survivorship, and dispersal capability, to project the effect of landscape changes on population size and persistence. The module projects the impact on a diverse group of species, ranging from annual plants to large vertebrates. To explore the effects of habitat changes more generally, the species-impact module was used to estimate effects on populations for a broad range of landscape-level changes that would not be realistic for the Little Tennessee River Watershed.