Ownership Parcels Research Articles

Retracted: A New Algorithm for Extracting Winter Wheat Planting Area Based on Ownership Parcel Vector Data and Medium-Resolution Remote Sensing Images

Retracted: A New Algorithm for Extracting Winter Wheat Planting Area Based on Ownership Parcel Vector Data and Medium-Resolution Remote Sensing Images

Illustrating land cover change associated with erosion management of the Little Blue River, Kansas, USA

AbstractErosion is a concern due to environmental degradation, loss of valuable cropland, increased sediment loads in aquatic systems, and reduced reservoir capacity. To manage erosion, riparian forest buffers and bendway weirs were installed in the Little Blue River, Kansas, during years 2002–2010. To illustrate land cover changes associated with management for upland and streambank erosion, indicated through terrestrial land gains, particularly of permanent tree cover relative to short‐lived crop cover, we digitized 1 m orthoimagery. For the pretreatment interval of 1991–2002, we digitized streambank edges to approximate change in river area. Due to river dynamics, for the 2002 and 2014 interval before and after treatment, we used land ownership parcels as fixed locations to assess changes in land area and land classes for 24 treated and 24 untreated parcels, each parcel group totaling 1575 ha. We appraised two extents of the unified streambank for both years and all land in parcels rather than isolating the river from the surrounding watershed. During 1991 to 2002, treated land parcels lost terrestrial land, whereas untreated land parcels gained land. During 2002–2014, treated land had greater river and crop cover, and less tree cover than untreated land. For the entire extent, with similar trends for the unified streambank extent, by 2014, treated parcels gained 27.3 ha of terrestrial land compared to 4.6 ha gained by untreated parcels. Gains occurred in tree cover and losses in river water and sediments cover. In treated parcels crop cover decreased, whereas in untreated parcels crop cover increased. Streamflows decreased over time, likely contributing to streambank stability. Despite lack of documented cost‐share agreements, in untreated parcels, landowners managed land by increasing tree cover to protect soil from erosion. All measurements were consistent with erosion followed by management for erosion through terrestrial land gains of tree cover.

Assessing golden‐winged warbler dispersal habitat in a highly parcelized landscape

AbstractGolden‐winged warblers (Vermivora chrysoptera) are facing population declines in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Breeding habitat loss is considered one of the primary reasons for golden‐winged warbler declines in the region. Expanding breeding habitat availability in a manner that promotes population expansion across an interconnected network of habitat patches is particularly problematic in a landscape dominated by private land ownership. We assessed the connectivity of golden‐winged warbler breeding habitat in a 29,680‐ha landscape with 5,664 ownership parcels between 2 state‐owned game lands in northwestern North Carolina, USA, in fall 2021. We created a connectivity map and provided examples of 3 means of prioritizing parcels for golden‐winged warbler habitat maintenance and management based on dispersal distances of fledglings that could return the following spring with prior familiarity of potential nesting areas. Prioritized parcels can guide land acquisition and conservation easement development as well as active management. Despite being highly parcelized, the area has both well‐connected and disjointed clusters of core habitat patches, but habitat management on privately owned parcels would be needed to connect core habitat patches to enable dispersing golden‐winged warbler fledglings to encounter potential breeding habitat that they could use the following spring.

Multiscale and efficient recognition of land cover by using both decomposition and deep visual feature analysis

As we know that when we use the colour bands that are pure in nature it will help some of the public authorities to update the land information. It will be a sensing platform so it will take less time and the cost we will be spending will not be much heavy, in that manner aircraft system will be used that should be unmanned. Here we will be using a method for optical aerial imagery that will come under land use classification with decision tree. In the beginning the ownership parcel map will come under play for taking the land cover information through maximum likelihood classifier. Then, to make the relation between land usage and land coverage we will generate the decision tree. A well structured parcel map will be produced by the merits of geographical characteristics of parcels.Hence the aftereffects of the spatial resolution under the classification approach will be discussed completely by sampling them again from the 20 then 50 then 100cm. This land use can be widely used in landscape and urban planning because of the flexible classification method. Using aerial images the object oriented approach for image based analysis is used for urban land cover mapping.

A New Algorithm for Extracting Winter Wheat Planting Area Based on Ownership Parcel Vector Data and Medium-Resolution Remote Sensing Images

In the complex planting area with scattered parcels, combining the parcel vector data with remote sensing images to extract the winter wheat planting information can make up for the deficiency of the classification from remote sensing images simply. It is a feasible direction for precision agricultural subsidies, but it is difficult to collect large-scale parcel data and obtain high spatial resolution or time-series remote sensing images in mass production. It is a beneficial exploration of making use of existing parcel data generated by the ground survey and medium-resolution remote sensing images with suitable time and spatial resolution to extract winter wheat planting areas for large-scale precision agricultural subsidies. Therefore, this paper proposes a new algorithm to extract winter wheat planting areas based on ownership parcel data and medium-resolution remote sensing images for improving classification accuracy. Initially, the segmentation of the image is carried out. To this end, the parcel data is used to generate the region of interest (ROI) of each parcel. Second, the homogeneity of each ROI is detected by its statistical indices (mean value and standard deviation). Third, the parallelepiped classifier and rule-based feature extraction classification methods are utilized to conduct the homogeneous and nonhomogeneous ROIs. Finally, two classification results are combined as the final classification result. The new algorithm was applied to a complex planting area of 103.60 km2 in central China based on the ownership parcel data and Gaofen-1 PMS and WFV remote sensing images in this paper. The experimental results show that the new algorithm can effectively extract winter wheat planting area, eliminate the problem of salt-and-pepper noise, and obtain high-precision classification results (kappa = 0.9279, overall accuracy = 96.41%, user’s accuracy = 99.16%, producer’s accuracy = 93.39%, commission errors = 0.84%, and omission errors = 6.61%) when the size of ownership parcels matches the spatial resolution of remote sensing images.

Investigating the Impact of Land Parcelization on Forest Composition and Structure in Southeastern Ohio Using Multi-Source Remotely Sensed Data

Forestland parcelization (i.e., a process by which large parcels of forestland ownership are divided into many small parcels) presents an increasing challenge to sustainable forest development in the United States. In Southeastern Ohio, forests also experienced intensive forestland parcelization, where the majority of forest owners own parcels smaller than 10 acres currently. To better understand the impact of forestland parcelization on forest development, this study employed multi-source remotely sensed data and land ownership data in Hocking County, Ohio to examine the relationship between forestland parcel size and forest attributes, including forest composition and structure. Our results show that private forestland parcels are generally smaller than public forestland (the average parcel sizes are 21.5 vs. 275.0 acres). Compared with private lands, public lands have higher values in all forest attributes, including forest coverage, abundance of oak-dominant stands, canopy height and aboveground biomass. A further investigation focusing on private forestland reveals that smaller parcels tend to have smaller forest coverage, less greenness, lower height and aboveground biomass, indicating that forests in smaller parcels may experience more human disturbances than larger parcels. The results also show that logarithmic models can well quantify the non-linear relationship between forest attributes and parcel size in the study area. Our study suggests that forestland parcelization indeed has negative effects on forest development, so it is very important to take appropriate measures to protect forests in small ownership parcels.

Water security assessment of current and future scenarios through an integrated modeling framework in the Neshanic River Watershed

Water security assessment based on the concept of blue versus green water is becoming widely accepted globally. Blue water is the combination of surface runoff and deep aquifer recharge while green water is the summation of evapotranspiration and soil water content (i.e. mediated by plants). Due to the tight coupling between land use and the partitioning of blue and green water within a watershed, an integrated geospatial modeling framework that links land use and watershed hydrological processes is needed to predict the consequences of future land use change on blue versus green water security. By loosely coupling an agent based probabilistic land use change model with a hydrologic model, we investigated the consequences of present trends of urban growth to identify potential future hotspots of hydrological change across a watershed in central New Jersey undergoing suburbanization. The agent based probabilistic model, working at the scale of land ownership parcels, predicted that future urban development would be the result of forest, rather than farm land conversion. Using existing zoning maps, the housing unit density and human population of the urban growth areas was estimated. A consequence of the loss of forest land and increasing impervious surface leading was higher blue water but lower green water. While no severe blue water scarcity was observed, an increasing green water scarcity was found in some study area sub-basins. Such information will aid watershed managers’ and policymakers’ effort in sustainably managing water resources under changing land use and climate.

SCENIC HUDSON'S LONG DOCK PARK CULTIVATING RESILIENCE: TRANSFORMING A POST-INDUSTRIAL BROWNFIELD INTO A FUNCTIONAL ECOSYSTEM

INTRODUCTION Scenic Hudson's Long Dock Park is a resilient living work of art and a vibrant community asset for the Hudson River Valley. A 23-acre peninsula on the east side of the Hudson at Beacon, New York, the site includes the Peter J. Sharp Park and the Klara Sauer Hudson River Trail. Two decades in the making, beginning in 1997, it took a decade to plan and remediate, and, by its completion in early 2017, it will have taken just as long to build and recover. In 1997, nonprofit Scenic Hudson, the largest environmental and land preservation group focused on the Hudson River Valley, started assembling the different ownership parcels of the Long Dock site. From 1999 to 2003, they engaged the Beacon community through a series of community meetings and workshops to articulate its vision for its waterfront and cleanup of the site began. From 2003 to 2007, the design team developed the architectural and site program for the project, restoration measures, and its physical expression with the client. Working with the City and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), the project completed the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) process, filing a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and received approval of the final EIS ensuring that there was significant environmental, social, or economic value. The NYSDEC and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) were also directly involved in oversight of the brownfield remediation and work within the Hudson River and site wetlands. With the SEQR process complete and approval of a mitigation plan from the USACE, the team worked with the City of Beacon to complete the site plan application process for construction. Our mandate was clear from the start—build resilience, but realize it incrementally. The project's first phase, opened in 2009, included additional remediation and removal of contaminated soils, removal of invasive species, stabilization of the south shoreline, a test plot for different materials, a wetland boardwalk and interior pathways, installation of native plantings, and site-specific artwork. By 2014, the landscape's multiple character zones were complete: the established meadow, the connective network of trails and boardwalks, the working site infrastructure of wetlands with swales and seeps, the dynamic intertidal zone, and earthen buttresses. A new pavilion for kayak storage and rentals and an arts and environmental education center in the historic Red Barn were significant additions for the program and community engagement of the park (refer to Figure 1). Over the past summer of 2016, portions of the site originally designed as a LEED platinum eco-hotel and conference center are now being remediated and reconceived as a new civic plaza, amphitheater, overlook west deck, boardwalk at Quiet Harbor, and a shade structure with an area for food trucks. Long Dock Park will continue to adjust and adapt to changing circumstances of ecology, climate change, flooding and sea level rise, and culture. Our original goals of renewing and revealing the historic waterfront, increasing public access to the river, restoring degraded environmental conditions, and demonstrating exemplary, environmentally sensitive development—these are complete. And the park was one of the first pilot projects for the Sustainable-SITES certification program and subsequently received SITES's highest rating of a SITES project at the time. Even as we considered program, spatial organization, and aesthetics, our work also sought to create in Long Dock a functional and sustainable ecosystem. The park's design needed to initiate natural processes for the degraded post-industrial brownfield to function and sustain ecosystem services that had not existed before. The design of healthy soils, the integration of hydrology, and the establishment of native plant communities form the true story of the site's transformation from postindustrial ruin into a significant waterfront park.

The significance of spatial fragmentation of land ownership for occurrence of scrubs on semi-natural grasslands

Traditionally, studies of habitat fragmentation have focused on spatial isolation of habitats. Meanwhile, the role of fragmentation of land ownership and hence of parcelization of habitats remains, particularly in relation to management of semi-natural grasslands, not well understood. We propose that, especially in a Danish context, fragmentation of land ownership leads to parcelization of semi-natural grassland habitats. This results in small parcel sizes, obstructing cost effective management in terms of grazing and mowing and consequently leads to encroachment of scrubs, threatening biodiversity. We applied national, spatially explicit information about land ownership, management, semi-natural grasslands and vegetation height to examine the relationships between parcel size, management and the proportion of scrubs on semi-natural grasslands. Results from a regression analysis show that parcel size is significantly negatively related to proportion of scrubs; i.e. small parcels are associated with higher proportions of scrubs compared to large parcels. The results also show that the size of ownership parcels has a stronger explanatory power for the proportion of scrub compared to the size of habitat parcels, where ownership boundaries are not taken into account. Furthermore, parcels, with legal obligations for management, have significantly lower proportion of scrubs compared to parcels without management obligations. Efforts for conservation of and improvement of biodiversity on semi-natural grassland should pay increasing attention towards the importance of fragmentation of land ownership and parcelization of habitats. Our results point at the need for cross-farm cooperation to secure continuous grassland management to prevent scrub encroachment.

Exploring the relationship between parcelization metrics and natural resource managers’ perceptions of forest land parcelization intensity

A major challenge associated with forest land parcelization, defined as the subdivision of forest land holdings into smaller ownership parcels, is that little information exists on how to measure its severity and judge its impacts across forest landscapes. To address this information gap, an on-line survey presented field-based public natural resource managers in the Lake States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan with four private forest ownership patterns, each containing the same total forest area, number of parcels, and average parcel size. Survey respondents ranked each landscape from most to least parcelized based on the degree to which each ownership pattern was perceived to adversely impact three forest-based goods and services: timber production, recreational access, and wildlife habitat. Using an exploded logit model, respondents’ rankings of parcelization impact were found to be consistent, regardless of the forest good or service evaluated. Rankings were also not influenced by the respondent’s professional discipline, location, length of professional experience, or employer. Of the four parcelization metrics evaluated, the Gini Coefficient and Adjusted Mean metrics appear to best capture the forest land ownership patterns that natural resource professionals are most concerned about, suggesting those metrics may be useful indicators by which to assess parcelization impact.

A tale of two land uses in the American West: rural residential growth and energy development

This paper describes a spatiotemporal land use map for a rural county in the western United States. Sublette County, Wyoming has undergone recent land use change in the form of heightened rural residential development on private land and increased energy development on both public and private land. In this study we integrate energy production data, population census data, ownership parcel data, and a series of Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper scenes (over a 25-year period) to create a map that illustrates the changing landscape. Spatial change on the landscape is mapped at 30 square meters, congruent with a Landsat pixel. Sublette County has a wealth of wildlife and associated habitat which is affected by both types of growth. While we do not attempt to quantify the effect of disturbance on wildlife species, we believe our results can provide important baseline data that can be incorporated into land use planning and ecological-wildlife research at the landscape scale.

Land-cover fragmentation and configuration of ownership parcels in an exurban landscape

The rate of low-density development beyond the urban and suburban periphery, known as exurban areas, has occurred at a rate faster than both urban and population growth and has the potential to affect water quality, carbon storage, and habitat availability. This paper is aimed at understanding the relationships between the heterogeneity of the human and natural components of the land system and their interactions, through assessment of residential land-cover characteristics and ownership parcels in these poorly understood exurban lands. New data are presented that describe the distribution of land-cover quantities and their degree of fragmentation in three townships in Southeastern Michigan. Analysis of land-cover data, collected from aerial photographs from 1950–2000 and digitized with a 10 m minimum mapping unit, provide an empirical link between lot-size and vegetation. Results show, among other findings, 1) the quantity and pattern of land-cover types significantly differ with parcel size, 2) the degree of difference was greatest between small parcels and all other sizes and least among large parcels, and 3) of five landscape metrics used to evaluate the quantity and fragmentation of land-cover types in residential parcels, the percent of parcel area provided the strongest delineation of differences in land cover among parcel sizes. Capturing quantities and patterns of land-cover at different sizes of land (parcel) ownership provide new data that can be coupled to ecosystem literature and models to link the outcomes of residential land-cover processes with simple ecosystem functions (e.g. carbon storage, albedo). Understanding how residential land-use and management processes collectively create regional land-cover patterns can provide insight into how residential lands might be managed to mitigate the effects of land change on climate.

An Economic Evaluation of a Small-Scale Timber Harvesting Operation in Western Maryland, USA

As forests of the eastern United States become fragmented into smaller ownership parcels, there is a growing need for timber harvesting contactors who can economically harvest timber and perform silvicultural operations on small tracts. Traditional large-scale harvesting operators are ill-suited for work on small parcels, due to their high fixed costs. By contrast, small-scale operators, characterized by few workers and low capital investment, offer an opportunity to serve this landowner segment. This paper presents financial and productivity results from a small-scale timber harvesting pilot study conducted on small forested parcels in western Maryland, USA. Acceptable financial performance is possible for these operations, provided that the operator pays close attention to the important factors determining productivity and profitability, including: (1) average tree volume, (2) net delivered price, (3) time utilization, and (4) distance to the site. Although profitable harvesting of saw log quality trees on parcels less than 10 ha is possible, harvesting of small or poor-quality trees remains economically unattractive.

Characterizing spatial patterns of land ownership at the parcel level in south-central Indiana, 1928–1997

Parcelization of land ownership is a process that has dramatic implications for how landscapes are managed and how socio-economic changes ultimately affect the pattern, composition and characteristics of the landscape. For a study area in south-central Indiana, a digital spatial dataset of ownership parcels was created from historical plat maps for the period of 1928–1997. The patterns of ownership parcelization were categorized into a typology based on characteristics of the parent and child parcels using a cluster analysis. These types were then used to describe the trajectory of parcelization, or life history, of a parcel using a transition matrix approach. Results show that the most common type of parcelization is one where a parent parcel splits into two equally sized child parcels. The results from the transition matrix analysis suggest that the history of a parcel is of importance in that it does enable and constrain future parcelization types. Possible relationships between the results from the quantitative analysis and underlying household social processes are also discussed and evaluated.

Predicting land use change: comparison of models based on landowner surveys and historical land cover trends

To make informed planning decisions, community leaders, elected officials, scientists, and natural resource managers must be able to evaluate potential effects of policies on land use change. Many land use change models use remotely-sensed images to make predictions based on historical trends. One alternative is a survey-based approach in which landowners’ stated intentions are modeled. The objectives of our research were to: (1) develop a survey-based landowner decision model (SBM) to simulate future land use changes, (2) compare projections from the SBM with those from a trend-based model (TBM), and (3) demonstrate how two alternative policy scenarios can be incorporated into the SBM and compared. We modeled relationships between land management decisions, collected from a mail survey of private landowners, and the landscape, using remotely-sensed imagery and ownership parcel data. We found that SBM projections were within the range of TBM projections and that the SBM was less affected by errors in image classification. Our analysis of alternative policies demonstrates the importance of understanding potential effects of targeted land use policies. While policies oriented toward increasing enrollment in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) resulted in a large (11–13%) increase in CRP lands, policies targeting increased forest thinning on private non-industrial lands increased low-density forest projections by only 1%. The SBM approach is particularly appropriate for landscapes including many landowners, because it reflects the decision-making of the landowners whose individual actions will result in collective landscape change.

Implementation of date-forward location update in the digital cadastral database

This paper describes a prototype software application, modeling the locational relationships of cadastral objects as understood by a cadastral cartographer tasked with compiling and updating the land ownership parcel map. Cadastral cartographers have a practical problem: in implementing their conceptual model of the land parcel map, it is preferable that location updates be made in the same order in which they arrive to be recorded. However, current technology requires that more spatially accurate surveys are entered into the database before less accurate ones are fitted to them––and contemporary surveys are typically more accurate than ancient or moderately old ones. Hence, updating a cadastral database for location entails reconstructing it a section at a time, entering surveys (in general) in reverse date order. A strategy is presented that allows updating of location in date-forward order. The strategy is based on capturing locational relationships and measurements extracted from plats and deed descriptions, so that when an object's location is updated, it sends a message to objects for which it is a spatial reference to update their own locations.

Land Use and Landscape Change in the Colorado Mountains II: A Case Study of the East River Valley

Rural land in the U.S. Rocky Mountains is being subdivided and developed for residential and commercial use at an unprecedented rate. In the East River Valley, Colorado, land ownership parcel size began to decline sometime during the last two decades after increasing for over a century-since the first European settlement. Roughly 20% of the private land in the valley has been divided into parcels smaller than about 45 acres (18 ha), parcels that cannot economically support agriculture. Development in the valley has caused significant land-cover fragmentation, especially in aspen, meadow, mixed conifer, and sagebrush cover types. Increased rates of house construction, from 3% per year during 1964-1990 to 8% per year from 1990 to 1994, and the conspicuous- ness of new roads and houses on the valley slopes, have enhanced local perception of rapid landscape change. Residents' concern over land use especially focuses on the creation of ranchettes-large-lot residential areas carved out of former cattle ranches-and on the community changes associated with population growth, absentee home ownership, and class distinctions between recent immigrants and long-time residents. This paper documents these changes in the ecological and social landscape of this rapidly developing mountain valley using landscape metrics and interviews of key residents.

Applying Biodiversity Gap Analysis in a Regional Nature Reserve Design for the Edge of Appalachia, Ohio (U.S.A.)

A biodiversity gap analysis is a method, now usually employing geographic information systems, for identifying deficiencies in existing biodiversity protection. Key principles of gap analysis were applied to a region of southcentral Ohio (U.S.A.) known as The Edge of Appalachia as part of a detailed, large‐scale (1:24,000) nature reserve design project. By combining Landsat thematic mapper imagery with ancillary data (bedrock geology, elevation, slope, aspect, and stream proximity), a rule‐based model was developed to differentiate and map the natural plant communities present in the 378‐km2 study area. The model was then used to generate a map depicting the most likely presettlement plant community distributions for the area. These two maps were compared against the 5273 ha owned and managed by state and local conservation organizations. For the current natural plant community distributions, regional land‐protection efforts represented each plant community proportionally; however, comparison with the presettlement vegetation clearly identified serious historical losses of several plant community types. Our results suggest that future land acquisitions should emphasize those plant community types that were once more widespread in the region prior to European settlement, a time when natural processes were less compromised by human activity. Current and historical plant‐community mapping results were combined and evaluated using the ownership parcel as the fundamental mapping unit. From parcel‐based desirability maps a conservation plan was developed that addressed community deficiencies using a representation target of25% for each community type, as derived from the modeled presettlement landscape.

Revising Techniques for Estimating Land Parcel Characteristics using Digital Spatial Data

Abstract Characteristics of individual land parcels were estimated for an area in Missouri using two methods: digital spatial data and an accepted system of landowner questionnaires. For the digital data, a geographically imprecise map of land ownership parcels was digitized for a 24210 ac study area. Using a GIS, this was overlaid on a classified digital satellite image in order to estimate parcel characteristics such as mean area, size distribution, and percent of a given ownership covered by forest and/or agriculture. At the same time, a currently used ground-based questionnaire survey which is used for the estimation of the same parameters as well as socioeconomic owner characteristics was conducted. Results from the two methods were comparable for estimating parcel characteristics. The digital approach is less costly and labor-intensive, but does not provide the same socioeconomic data provided by the questionnaire. North. J. Appl. For. 11(3):80-86.

A base mapping program for Wyandotte County, Kansas (a multipurpose land records information system)

Wyandotte County, Kansas, has developed a parcel-level land records system over the past 10 years, accomplished primarily by the staff of the County Base Mapping Program. The graphic component of the system is a digital map of the boundaries of ownership parcels based on recorded deeds. The non-graphic component is a common data base with records on land parcels, designed to be easily accessible, easily maintained, flexible for new applications and expandable for new data elements. The positions of parcel boundaries in the digital map have been reconciled with the positions of all planimetric features shown on the large-scale topographic base maps. However, the mapping of boundaries is only gradually being reconciled with the legal descriptions of the properties, as the results of new surveys or other reviews of the legal records become available. This incremental approach to accuracy in mapping of cadastral boundaries has allowed the County to complete its digital map relatively quickly with sufficient accuracy for most users, while continuing to improve the precision of the map for eventual use for legal or engineering records which require higher standards. Topological relationships among parcels are recorded in the digitizing process, but the topology has been used to date only for editing of the digitized point data.