State and trends
motivations for returning included being closer to relatives, proximity to outdoor recreation (camping, fishing, and hunting were prominently mentioned), opportunities for civic leadership and volunteering, and shorter commutes to work. The primary barriers were low wages and lack of career opportunities, which required creative strategies to overcome, lack of cultural events, and limited amenities, shopping and dining options. The rural communities benefitted from an influx of well-educated professionals who brought business contacts, leadership skills, and an interest in community well-being, especially primary and secondary education. Thus rural counties experiencing population growth may be at the forefront of benefitting from the returnees’ talents. Increasing in-migration to rural areas and stemming the departure of young people will require local civic and political leadership capable of dealing with complex cultural and socio-economic factors to shape policy approaches while helping keep the local economy and landscapes healthy and resilient (Center for Rural Affairs 2015).
2.2.3 Recent trends in North American land cover
Land-cover change analysis has made remarkable progress in the past 20 years. The advance resulted from shifting imagery platforms – from aerial film photography to digital imagery from new sensors on satellites or aircraft – and greatly increased computing power. The most useful sensors for land cover analyses at a broad landscape scale are the 30 metre Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor on the LANDSAT platform and the 200 metre MODIS sensors on the TERRA and AQUA platforms. There has been much experimental work with higher resolution sensors and with synthetic aperture radar, called LIDAR. But not many operational monitoring programmes are using LIDAR at large spatial scales, such as those that cover provinces or large states. LIDAR imagery is more appropriate for smaller spatial scales because the very large and dense LIDAR datasets require substantial storage and very high-speed processors for analysis.
Beyond better sensors and digital imagery, geo-spatial analysis software has also become more available and
powerful.
In the 1990s, geo-spatial software generally
required dedicated workstations and software. In 1999, software was introduced that ran under the Microsoft Windows operating system. This vastly expanded the pool of users and created an integrated set of tools for creating, analyzing, and storing geospatial data and information products that were more accessible to analysts and policy makers. The recent introduction of cloud-based computing has also made geo-spatial information products more widely available.
These new tools are increasingly being used by governments and non-governmental organizations at all spatial scales for decision-making. A strong attribute of these products is the data layers behind them, which when used with advanced geospatial software, can help local and county governments, state and provincial governments, and federal agencies make better policies, set relevant priorities, and plan management activities effectively. By making the data openly available to all, citizens are better able to visualize and participate in policy-making and decision-making.
Indeed, better data leads to better dialogue, which leads to better decisions.
Two North American teams have taken advantage of these advances to develop land cover change datasets and maps. Under the auspices of FAO’s North American Forestry Commission (NAFC), a team of experts from Canada, Mexico and the US worked for more than a decade to develop an ecoregional database that can generate consistent tables and maps of forests across all three countries (Figure 2.2.4). The second team of experts worked on the North American Land Change Monitoring System (NALCMS), under the auspices of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). This team produced a land cover transition matrix (Table 2.2.2) and an ecological zone map for North America (Figure 2.2.5). The same team also analyzed the causes of tree cover changes. They found that large fires were more prevalent in more northerly latitudes in the Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, while fires were smaller and spread out more extensively in southerly parts of those provinces.
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