Federal Interagency Science Plans to Investigate the Impacts of Suburban Sprawl in the Mid-Atlantic Region

WRD PROJECT #: MD161
PROJECT CHIEF: Shedlock, Robert
BEGIN DATE: 01-Apr-2001
END DATE: 30-Sep-2001

Customers currently supporting the project:

U.S. Geological Survey

Problem

The impact of suburban sprawl on the environment and its effect on the availability and sustainability of natural resources has become a high visibility issue for communities and government agencies at all levels across the Nation. Policy makers, planners, resource managers, and the public are promoting "smart growth" and "sustainable development." Most land-use decisions that affect development patterns in an area are made at a county or municipal level. Yet most metropolitan areas obtain their building materials and water resources from areas that commonly extend beyond any one political jurisdiction. Therefore, planners and policy makers need objective natural resource assessment information at several spatial scales to develop policies and laws that promote sustainable development and protect the environment in their communities and metropolitan areas.

Suburban sprawl is a common problem in the Mid-Atlantic region, which includes some of the oldest metropolitan areas in our Nation and the heavily populated urban corridor between New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Since 1999, the USGS has been a major player in a consortium of federal agencies that has been meeting to determine ways of working together on major environmental issues in the Mid-Atlantic region. This consortium, The Mid-Atlantic Federal Partners for the Environment (MAFPE), identified suburban sprawl as its highest priority issue and developed a Memorandum of Agreement to work together to provide technical assistance to help communities deal with the impacts of sprawl. Several DOI agencies are in the MAFPE partnership, including USGS, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and Office of Surface Mining. Other partners include the Environmental Protection Agency, Natural Resource Conservation Service, US Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Highway Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

Objectives

USGS scientists have been leading a MAFPE workgroup that is developing a science plan that integrates the programs and activities of the partner agencies relevant to the environmental and natural resource consequences of sprawl. Representatives of each of the four science disciplines in the USGS have participated in previous efforts of this workgroup. The objective of the work proposed here is to keep USGS in this leadership role leading to completion of the interagency science plan. The plan is intended to integrate the efforts and expertise of MAFPE federal agencies in a manner that provides sound and useful scientific information to State and local agencies making land-use policies and decisions.

Approach

MAFPE has three major activities in the arena of suburban sprawl. The first is the development of the interagency science plan. The second is the organization of a large regional workshop involving participants from federal, state, and local agencies. The third activity is the procurement of memoranda of agreement between counties and cities in the Mid-Atlantic region and selected MAFPE agencies. These agreements would provide regulatory tools and environmental information that could help the local jurisdictions preserve areas that have a recognized value for natural resource or ecological preservation.

The first two activities, the writing of the science plan and the organization of the regional workshop, are linked. The science plan workgroup will develop a framework for a regional science plan but will not complete it until receiving comment and feedback from participants in the workshop. USGS staff would be assigned to work on both of the first two activities. These staff would also work with staff from other agencies to complete an inventory of existing and planned programs that would contribute scientific information or monitoring data relevant to sprawl.

Each MAFPE agency will be asked to contribute funding to cover the capital costs of putting on the regional workshop (such as facility rental, printing of announcements, supplies, etc.). Agencies have also been solicited to provide staff and their travel costs for the planning meetings that will be necessary to write the science plan and organize the workshop.