PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #38: Landscape Ecology.
Thursday, August 9, 2001. Presentation from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM. Exhibition Hall

Definition of current patch structure drivers from historic land records.

Bain, Daniel ¹, Brush, Grace¹, ¹

ABSTRACT- Original land surveys are commonly used to explain current landscape configuration in areas surveyed using the Public Land Survey's township, range, section system. For areas in the Eastern United States, surveyed using a system of metes and bounds, use of land records is less common. The Gwynns Falls watershed (Baltimore, Maryland) straddles the rural-urban continuum. An accounting of the original land grants in this watershed has been completed. The data suggests the original land grant configuration is an important determinant of current patch structure at several scales. At the watershed scale, much of the lower half of the watershed was originally ceded to the Baltimore Company in large tracts, providing forested areas for charcoal production. This precluded high-density residential and commercial land use in the watershed during Baltimore's early growth. As a result, the disturbances in this area are more recent and the patch structure comparatively more dynamic. On a smaller scale, the original grant boundaries form a template that determines current patch structure. Carroll Park, in southwest Baltimore, is an anomalous vegetated area in an otherwise heavily industrialized area. Carroll Park shares boundaries with the original land grant (from 1732). Without the persistence of this tract, open space in this particular area would be improbable.

KEY WORDS: land records, patch template, Baltimore, MD, urban-rural continuum