Issues
The State of the Land
Rivers
are only as healthy as the land in their watersheds, since
water
must flow over and through that land on its path to the river
and then the
sea. For this reason, monitoring changes in land uses is key
to understanding the state of the Ipswich River.
In the Ipswich River watershed, there are four different kinds of land
use categories: developed (also called urban) land, wetlands,
agriculture, and forests. Before colonial times,
this region was almost entirely forested. During colonial
times most of the forests were cleared for agriculture.
Today the conversion of natural spaces and environments into developed, built-upon parcels without effective community planning and management to protect these spaces and community character - sprawl - is affecting the health of the Ipswich River. Sprawl developments,
together with the roads and infrastructure they require, segment
and eliminate wildlife habitat, increase stormwater and pollutant
runoff, replace diverse ecosystems with built structures and
mono-cultures such as lawns, and perhaps most important to
the Ipswich River, require additional water for domestic,
commercial, industrial, and landscape uses.
Consider
these trends:
-
Between 1980 and 2000, the population in of the watershed
increased by 9 percent, yet residential land use increased
by 35 percent.
-
Between 1971 and 1999, the area of forested land in the
Ipswich River watershed is estimated to have decreased by
more than 15 percent.
-
This decline in forested land included an estimated 25 percent
decline in forested wetlands.
-
The area of developed land has increased an estimated 20
percent since 1960.
-
One area of good news is that the area of non-forested wetlands
is estimated to have largely held constant since 1971.
-
Developed land throughout Massachusetts now has less than
half the population density (4.97 persons/acre) than it
had in 1950 (11.19 persons/acre).
For more information:
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