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Roadless space of the conterminous United States

January 1, 2007

Roads encroaching into undeveloped areas generally degrade ecological and watershed conditions and simultaneously provide access to natural resources, land parcels for development, and recreation. A metric of roadless space is needed for monitoring the balance between these ecological costs and societal benefits. We introduce a metric, roadless volume (RV), which is derived from the calculated distance to the nearest road. RV is useful and integrable over scales ranging from local to national. The 2.1 million cubic kilometers of RV in the conterminous United States are distributed with extreme inhomogeneity among its counties.

Publication Year 2007
Title Roadless space of the conterminous United States
DOI 10.1126/science.1138141
Authors R.D. Watts, R.W. Compton, J.H. McCammon, C.L. Rich, S.M. Wright, T. Owens, D.S. Ouren
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Science
Index ID 70029732
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse