Use of FIA data and GIS to characterize the effects of fragmentation on the forests of New Hampshire

Urbanization, and the resulting fragmentation of forest land, are of great concern across the world and continues to affect many facets of natural ecosystems. Due to development pressure, this is especially true in the northeastern United States. Assessments of regional and national forest fragmentation highlight where forest fragmentation has occurred at one point in time, but there is little information on the composition, structure, and health of fragmented forests at state or regional scales. We used a raster land-cover classification of New Hampshire to characterize the level of fragmentation and urbanization in the local neighborhood surrounding each forested Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plot. FIA inventory data were used to characterize forests in New Hampshire that were more and less fragmented with respect to forest-type group, standsize class, tree species richness, tree species diversity, and forest health.