A case study in the Mid-Atlantic region found almost 2 million forest patches 1.2 acres or less in size. This indicates there are a few large patches of forest remaining in the Mid-Atlantic region. However, the figure showing forests and low-density housing suggests there is extensive human development within patches of all sizes in this region. Patches of interior forest habitat distributed across the Mid-Atlantic region are illustrated by a pair of remote sensing images. This map shows areas with housing density between one house per acre and one house per 20 acres.
Forests are in gray.
For this study, patches were defined as areas of forest surrounded by nonforests. The satellite images and data processing techniques used in this study did not recognize small breaks less than roughly 100 feet wide within forest patches. There are many different ways to measure fragmentation, because there are a variety of features that can be seen as subdividing a forest, and different scales at which the various definitions make sense. Different age classes of trees within a forest, also shown here, may be considered different patches. We were not able to reach agreement on a measure of fragmentation associated with such features.