Protection status and proximity to public‐private boundaries influence land use intensification near U.S. parks and protected areas

Public parks and protected areas are highly valued resources for recreation, education, and conservation of species and ecosystems. Increased demand for exurban lifestyles near protected areas may threaten these services, but to date research has been limited to case studies or considered only the most protected areas. We quantified changes (1990–2010) in the density of residential housing and impervious surface within 1, 10, 25, and 50 km of 6,644 U.S. protected areas, from highly protected national parks and wilderness areas to less protected game reserves and recreation areas. In almost all cases, housing density and impervious surface near protected areas were significantly higher than what would be expected by chance. Lands near protected areas with the highest level of protection (GAP I) experienced the greatest overall increase in housing and impervious area over time, but––contrary to earlier projections––little change occurred within 1 km of private‐public boundaries. An opposite pattern occurred near the least protected areas (GAP IV)––lands immediately adjacent to these parks experienced the largest rates of change, but this growth decreased further from their boundaries. Most of the changes near GAP IV areas occurred in the Eastern Temperate Forest ecoregion, though the greatest overall rates of land change occurred in the Southwest. Our findings suggest that previous studies may overestimate the extent to which housing growth broadly threatens conservation of U.S. protected areas. For the first time, we demonstrate that land change near protected areas varies by protection status, proximity to public‐private boundaries, and ecoregion. To make these data more accessible to practitioners, we have created an interactive, online mapping platform that allows anyone to explore location‐specific trends in land change near parks and protected areas.