Spatial patterns of social-ecological transitions in the great plain rangelands in Nebraska

Keywords: transition, vegetation, rangelands, tree cover, scale, spatial extent
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 78

Abstract

The transition of vegetation from one community to another is depicted with increase in tree cover in the great plain rangelands in Nebraska. However, not much is known about the coupled interactions of social and ecological dynamics on vegetation transition These transitions, especially at large scales, are complex. Tree area on the landscape has been correlated with humans for the last 200 years on this landscape, and it still is. The relationship between trees and people is not the same over space, and is driven by different processes, based on human development and types of human responses. Major questions of our interest are: do changes in demographic variables impact accelerated transition of grass to trees? are human drivers and responses to transition the same spatially? and does this relationship alter at different spatial scale? We try to explore this relationship between biophysical change and human response (or vice versa). The transition from grass to trees is potentially influenced by various ecological, social, and economic variables. This study is focused on relationship between increasing tree cover and demographic variables (total population, farm number, and average farm size) in Nebraska. We use county level tree cover and the demographic variables to evaluate the relationship over a period of 30 years (1987-2019) at three spatial extents – county, ecological region, and state. Results show that relationship between tree cover and demographic variables is stronger at county level. We tend to lose the pattern at coarser scale at ecological region or state level.