Landscape Change on the Cumberland Plateau: Drivers, Consequences, and Policy Solutions for a Key Biodiversity Hotspot
Session Organizers: Charles Brockett and Jonathan Evans

Description: Chattanooga lies next to the Cumberland Plateau's biologically rich hardwood forests, which contain some of the largest tracts of privately owned contiguous temperate deciduous forest remaining on the continent. Consequently, the region is considered by many to have one of the highest conservation-value forests remaining in North America. This symposium reports on the research of an interdisciplinary set of participants from the region (2 papers each by biologists, foresters, and political scientists, and one by economists), the majority of whom have been collaborating for a decade through outside funded research with numerous resulting papers and publications on the drivers, processes, and consequences of landscape changes on the Cumberland Plateau and conservation-related policy solutions.