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Mapping Human Population Density in and Around New Hapmshire's Loon Lakes: A Comparison of Dasymetric Methods
Citation:
HOLLISTER, J. W., A. KUHN, AND J. L. Copeland. Mapping Human Population Density in and Around New Hapmshire's Loon Lakes: A Comparison of Dasymetric Methods. Presented at US-International Association of Landscape Ecology Annual Meeting, Snowbird, UT, April 12 - 16, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
A stated goal of the Ecological Research Programs ecosystem services research is to map ecosystem services across the United States. As humans are integral to the definition of ecosystems services, accurate data on the spatial distribution of human populations is a key base dataset. Furthermore, understanding the impact of human settlement patterns on key wildlife species provides important information on how anthropogenic stressors interact with ecosystems and how those stressors may ultimately impair essential components of our nation’s water quality.
Description:
The impact of anthropogenic stressors on ecosystems is directly related to the pattern of human population density across the landscape; thus, accurate information on the distribution of human populations is critical for associating the impact of human population and ecological responses. In particular, we are interested in the impact of population density around lakes in New Hampshire on common loon (Gavia immer) fitness. While data from the U.S. Census Bureau has proven to be invaluable at mapping human population, simply aggregating the population densities of census geographies (e.g. block, block group, tract, and county) to more ecologically meaningful geographies (e.g. watersheds, buffers around waterbodies, or animal home ranges) via an equal area distribution may lead to bias in population estimates. Other methods of redistributing population data, such as dasymetric mapping techniques which use ancillary data for redistributing the census data, may provide less biased estimates for these other geographies.