Unless there are big changes in the ways land is used and developed in the southeastern U.S., by 2060 a massive corridor of traffic-choked urban sprawl will stretch from central North Carolina all the way to Atlanta and possibly even as far west as Birmingham, a new study says.

Published July 23 in the scientific journal PLOS ONE by North Carolina State University and the U.S. Department of Interior's Southeast Climate Science Center, the report says urban areas in the region are expected to double in size over the next 45 years.

"If we continue to develop urban areas in the Southeast the way we have for the past 60 years, we can expect natural areas will become increasingly fragmented," said study lead author Dr. Adam Terando, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct assistant professor at N.C. State.

That growth will come at the "expense of agricultural and forest lands," the U.S. Geological Survey said in a press release, pointing out that this "raises a number of ecological concerns" because of the ways it will limit the movement of wildlife, cut off migration patterns and interfere with their ability to find food and mates and adapt to changes in their environment.

"This, in turn, increases the likelihood that we’ll see more conflicts between people and wildlife, such as the increasing interactions with bears we’re seeing in our suburban areas,"Terando added.

Projected urban land cover by 2060 in the Piedmont eco-region. The red, orange and yellow highlighted areas show connected urban landscape.

(PLOSONE)

The study, titled "The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S.", examined what we can expect the southeast to look like over the next few decades based not just on population growth, but on how the region has developed over the recent past.

This "business as usual" (BAU) scenario is the best predictor for how the region can be expected to develop, the study says. "While recent 'Smart-Growth' initiatives that promote more intensive development and a return to a strong urban core are gaining popularity, this BAU scenario is still reflective of the primary development model," the study notes. "And without significant changes to the status quo, this type of growth will continue."

What does that development model look like? One in which urban areas continue to expand rapidly even when the population doesn't grow quickly, because the region has developed in ways that make it heavily automobile-dependent.

Urban heat islands-a phenomenon metro Atlanta residents know well - also could become more common as the climate warms, the study notes. That, in turn, could favor species that can take advantage of hotter conditions like insects, and past studies have shown that certain pests are more abundant in hotter urban areas than in rural areas.

The researchers who led the study say it highlights the need for a "well-thought out strategy for future development," and that future urbanization could have an even greater impact on the region than climate change.

"Unless we change course, over the next 50 years urbanization will have a more pronounced ecological impact in many non-coastal areas of the Southeast than climate change," said study co-author Jennifer Costanza, a research associate at N.C. State.

"It's impossible to predict precisely what the specific ecological outcomes would be, but so far, the projections are not good in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem health," she added.

Read the full study, The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S., at PLOS ONE.

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