Adjacency hazard values for several habitat areas grouped closely together varied markedly due to the proximity of several areas to the edge of an agricultural area. In effect, these areas helped buffer more secluded sites from the adverse effects of development. One can also discern from the map the potential for flow zone analysis to miss key influences. If we imaging the flow zone extending to the northwest of the displayed sites, it is easy to visualize how this approach would fail to capture the influence of agricultural fields located southeast of our study areas. One primary concern of the group was to capture anthropogenic hazards likely to be missed by the landcover data due to resolution and interpretation limitations.
Roads are highly influential forces affecting ecological systems.
Most importantly, they may be overlooked when remotely sensed landcover data is the sole basis for evaluating the influence of land features on habitat areas. The use of road coverage, particularly forest and rural roads, offered a means of better assessing the hazards influencing habitat areas in less urbanized regions. The value of this added analytical framework is evidenced by the presence of several areas in the top ten road density results which do not appear in analyses strictly based on land cover analysis. However the overlay of roads powerfully shows the importance of this coverage, particularly as the road coverage intrudes upon the habitat boundaries itself. These results were facilitated by excellent consistency among coverages.