ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Ecological Impact of Future Land Use in SoutheastemNew Jersey By TENLEY M. CONWAY Dissertation Director: Richard G. Lathrop Jr. Land use change is the primary way humans are modifying the environment. Changes in land use can impact (1) biodiversity through habitat alteration and removal, (2) local and global water and radiation cycles, and (3) atmospheric composition (Riebsame et al. 1994). A common approach to studying land use change is empirical modeling. As the process of land use change is often irreversible (Lee et al. 1998), land use modeling provides a way to assess the impact of different policies on future land use before irreversible transformations occur. However, little work has tried to incorporate land use policies into models to assess potential ecological impacts. In this thesis, a modeling approach was developed to assess the ecological consequences of land use policies in the Barnegat Bay and Mullica River watersheds in southeastern New Jersey. The modeling approach uses spatial constraints, which place transition restrictions on specific cells based on characteristics of the cells, surrounding neighborhood, and the policy in $. questign. This approach focuses on changing land use patterns, a good starting point for examining ecological impacts. Several scenarios were modeled to represent policies commonly used in the United States to manage urban growth. To assess differences --._\ between the predicted policy scenarios, two sets of indicators were developed: (1) landscape resistance indictors to measure changes in terrestrial habitat connectivity and (2) percent impervious surface to measure changes in non-point source pollution. Based on the model and indicator analysis, several conclusions can be made: (1) resistance-based metrics of habitat connectivity are more appropriate for urban landscapes than existing measures, (2) the study area is very sensitive to non-point source pollution associated with impervious surface, (3) many of the commonly used land use policies are ineffective at minimizing the ecological impact of urban development, (4) in the short- term, adopting policies that create more disperse urban development will have a greater negative impact than adopting no policy at all, and (5) in the long-term the most effective policies are those that make land unavailable for development. iii