Characterizing Patterns And Drivers Of Land Use/Land Cover Change Along The Atlantic Coast Barrier Beaches : Examining The Roles Of Development Pressure, Spatial Accessibility, And Policy

Abstract

Within the context of land change science coastal areas are often overlooked. Coastal areas around the world and within the U.S. represent the largest concentrations of people, development, and wealth. Natural, social, spatial, and policy processes operating on barrier beaches make them dynamic regions in which to observe land use and land cover change. The U.S. Atlantic Coast represents one of the world's largest continuous chains of barrier beaches. Understanding the makeup, drivers, and uses of these landscapes is important to understanding how humans have impacted these environments through processes of land conversion to developed use. Place-based classification of these environments and quantitative and qualitative analysis of drivers and trajectories of development can provide coastal managers insight into how these dynamic regions operate as examples of coupled natural human systems. This has the potential to both change and create new policies tailored to this region. The study will accomplish the following (1) Perform a quantitative descriptive analysis creating a typology of barrier beach types for the Atlantic Coast; (2) Develop quantitative statistical models explaining rates of developed land use conversion for barrier beaches that incorporates theories, tests hypothesis, and applies methods from Land Change Science; (3) Develop a new theoretical model of coastal restructuring that is applied to a localized place-based analyses of selected barrier beach places. In accomplishing these tasks a new understanding of coastal barrier beach land use land cover change is created. This allows for better understanding of the processes and influences that act upon barrier beaches. The coastal environment is an ever-changing multifaceted region that continues to evolve from natural processes as well as anthropogenic inputs over time. The purpose of this research is to create a better understanding of the coastal environment of the United States; more specifically the social and physical landscapes of Atlantic coast barrier beaches. In doing so it will move towards a science of U.S. coastal land cover change science. This is important because human land behaviors on the coast have important effects on both natural and cultural resources, terrestrial and marine environments, and regional sense of place. Because of this explicitly coastal-themed research is needed to understand the patterns and drivers of coastal landscape change in ways that integrate the biophysical and social science domains. This dissertation is comprised of three main parts that examine different aspects of Atlantic barrier beach land change and coastal development. Chapter 3, which is entitled "Landscapes and Land Cover Characterization of the U.S. Atlantic Barrier Coast: A Place-Based Typological Classification, 1990-2000" creates a placed based typology of barrier beach units across the Atlantic coast. Many of the U.S. Atlantic coast's barrier beaches have undergone a shift in place identity from elite getaway destinations and small fishing communities to tourist-driven, place-based destinations. This dynamic is related to changing demographic and economic characteristics that may also be associated with changing patterns of developed land use. This chapter quantitatively examines spatial patterns of socio-economic and land use/cover characteristics for a comprehensively defined set of coastal barrier places spanning from Long Island, New York to Miami, Florida on the U.S. Atlantic coast. Census data from 1990 and 2000 and satellite derived land use/cover data are used as input to a cluster analysis generating place-based typology. Results reveal that there in fact is a separation among Atlantic Coast barrier beaches into distinct cluster types. This separation is a direct influence of the tourism industry among many of the barrier beach communities where there is large number of the housing units are seasonal units as well as lower development densities and an observed growth in developed land cover during the study period. Chapter 4, which is entitled "Rates and Drivers of Coastal Development for Atlantic Barrier Beaches" evaluates the hypothesized drivers of developed land cover change on barrier beaches. Barrier beach land use land cover has changed over time as driving forces act to shift natural barrier beach habitat to developed land cover. This is important because the important ecosystem services barrier beaches provide for the coastal region, especially along the Atlantic coast. There is little known about the forces that act upon these barrier beaches that causes developed land cover. After identifying hypothesizes of coastal driving forces of developed land use change, ordinary least squares regression (OLS) is applied. The chapter estimates five regression models that investigate natural, social, spatial, and policy variables, as well as a combination of all variables within a full model. A forward stepwise regression was also run on the full model to identify major influential factors. The results show that the full model highly explains developed land cover change on barrier beaches along the Atlantic coast and that size of a barrier beach unit over all variables is dominant factor for developed land cover change. Along with size the percent of seasonal housing were both found exhibit positive correlation to developed land cover. Chapter 5 develops a new a theoretical coastal restructuring model of land cover change. A conceptual framework of societal land use/cover change is created to aid in the creation of the historical narratives that can be applied to Atlantic barrier beach communities. The coastal restricting model is then applied to two selected Atlantic barrier beach places to interpret trajectories of development. Historical narratives are paired with quantitative results from prior chapters to guide site selection as well as provide quantitative data about each place. Using the historical narrative the phases of development are determined within the coastal restructuring model. This in turn reveals the how landscape evolves over time from one landscape use to another. The results of the analysis indicate that the coastal restructuring model has the potential to be applied to all barrier beach units as well as to be used as a guiding framework for landscape scholars and coastal planners and managers.