The cumulative effects problem in natural resource management and land use planning stems from the difficulty of demonstrating that while each single land use change results in a negligible impact, the accumulation of these individual changes over time and within a landscape or region may constitute a major impact. This paper details a general approach to estimate the cumulative effects of land use change on wildlife habitat using Summit County, CO, USA as a case study. Our approach is based on a functional relationship between effect on habitat and distance from development. Within this building-effect distance, habitat is assumed to be degraded, producing a disturbance zone. We sum the total area within the disturbance zone and track [...]
