In recent years, counties in the Intermountain West (CO, ID, MT, UT, WY) have experienced rapid population growth and housing development, and much of this growth is occurring outside of urban areas. Residental development can have negative impacts on farmlands, farm viability, and environmental services provided by working landscapes. In this study, I use county-level data to explore the association between residential settlement patterns and trends in farm numbers, copland acres, and farm sales between 1997-2012 in this region. Results from traditional ordinary least-squares and spatial regression models demonstrate that population pressure (e.g. rural population density), socioeconomic structure (e.g. median household income), and biophysical resources (e.g. length of growing season) are related to different types of farm trends, but that accounting for the spatial pattern or arrangement of rural and exurban residential development can improve models to explain agricultural change. Since spatial dependencies are present among different variables, this study also demonstrates that spatial regression methods are appropriate and useful to use when modeling country-level processes of socioeconomic change.

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This study examines the effectiveness of using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from 1326 different Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper images in finding isolated housing starts within the Commonwealth of Virginia's forests. Individual NDVI images were stacked by year for the years 1995-2011 and the yearly maximum for each pixel was extracted, resulting in a 17-year image stack of all yearly maxima (a 98.7% data reduction). Using location data from housing starts and well permits, known previously forested housing starts were isolated from all other forest disturbance types. Samples from housing starts and other forest disturbances, as well as from undisturbed forest, were used to derive vegetation index thresholds enabling separation of disturbed from undisturbed forest. Disturbances, once identified, were separated accurately (overall accuracy = 85.4 percent, F-statistic = 0.86) into housing starts and other forest disturbances using a classification tree and only two variables from the Disturbance Detection and Diagnostics (D3) algorithm: the maximum NDVI in the available recovery period and the slope between the NDVI value at the time of the disturbance and the maximum NDVI in the available recovery period. Landsat time series stacks thus show promise for identifying even the small changes associated with exurban development. / Master of Science

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Lieu touristique ancien, la forêt de Fontainebleau connait une situation paradoxale depuis les années 1960. Les estimations de sa fréquentation sont en hausse, passant de 9 millions en 1969 à 17 millions en 1999. Dans le même temps, l'ensemble des services touristiques disparaissent en forêt. Le pays de Fontainebleau, territoire dans lequel s'inscrit le lieu, connait une diminution du nombre de lits touristiques. Le processus de périurbanisation entraine une transition résidentielle où une part importante des résidences secondaires sont devenus des résidences principales. La mutation résidentielle du territoire nous amène à réfléchir sur l'évolution des pratiques et des représentations de la forêt de Fontainebleau. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier la trajectoire de la forêt de Fontainebleau en questionnant son héritage touristique. Pour cela, notre recherche doctorale s'appuie sur une enquête ethnographique sur les pratiques récréatives et le tissu associatif en forêt de Fontainebleau et sur un corpus documentaire mobilisant des archives, œuvres artistiques et littérature touristique. La forêt de Fontainebleau constitue un laboratoire pour questionner la notion de tourisme au regard de la perception moderne des espaces naturels. Il permet aussi de s'interroger sur la place des lieux construit par le tourisme dans l'ancrage d'habitants du territoire et sur les conflits que cela peut engendrer. / Tourist place since the 19th century, the forest of Fontainebleau knows a paradoxical situation since the 1960's. The estimation of his attendance is increasing, passer-by from 9 million in 1969 to 17 million in 1999. At the same time, the set of the tourist services disappears in the forest. Around the forest, the territory knows a decrease of the number of tourist beds. Exurbanisation pulled a residential transition where an important part of second homes became main homes. This process brings us to reflect about the evolution of the practices and the representations of the place. The objective of this thesis is to study the trajectory of the place by questioning its tourist inheritance. Our research leans on an ethnographical survey c the recreational practices in the forest of Fontainebleau and the associative tissue in the territory of Fontainebleau. Also, we study a documentary corpus mobilizing archives, artistic works and tourist literature. The forest of Fontainebleau constitutes a laboratory to question the notion of tourism with regard to the modem perception of the wilderness area. It also allows to wonder about the power of places builds by the tourism in inhabitants' anchoring of the territory and the conflicts which it can engender.

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