Forty years of land use and land ownership change in central Sierra Nevada oak woodlands

Abstract

The vast majority of California’s oak woodlands are privately owned, and, therefore, highly susceptible to changes in land use and ownership as well as land fragmentation. This is particularly true in the Central Sierra Nevada, where significant changes in land use have occurred during the past 40 years. Perhaps no location illustrates this trend better than the Central Sierra Nevada, an area that has experienced a dramatic shift in land use away from traditional rural land uses such as timber harvesting, livestock grazing, and irrigated agriculture toward rural residential developments driven largely by an influx of new residents that began migrating into this area in the early 1970s.

Parent Publication

• Proceedings of the fifth symposium on oak woodlands: oaks in California’s changing landscape. 2001 October 22-25; San Diego, CA.

Citation

Wacker, Matt; Saah, David; Fortmann, Louise. 2002. Forty years of land use and land ownership change in central Sierra Nevada oak woodlands. In: Standiford, Richard B., et al, tech. editor. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Oak Woodlands: Oaks in California''s Challenging Landscape. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-184, Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture: 841-843