Page 8 - Georgia Forestry - Issue 4 - Fall 2023

GFA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Addressing the State’s Coming Landscape Changes
Georgia Conservancy’s Katherine Moore Shares Perspectives on Land Use Change Research
By John Casey
It’s no secret that Georgia is growing, and fast. Experts predict that the state’s population will boom over the coming decades, with estimates saying Georgia will add 3 million people by 2060.
and rural, will experience transforma- tional landscape changes over the com- ing years.
“Let your eyes linger at the growth around the other metros — Savannah, Augusta, Columbus, Macon-Bibb, Albany, and even far south to Valdosta,” said Moore. “Within that, look at some of the more rural growth. We often don’t take that as seriously as we notice some of the major metro growth, and all that growth has implications.”
Amid national concerns about sustain- ability and renewable resources, Moore stressed that land is the most important limited resource of all.
“If we find ourselves in a resource crisis, it’s probably because we’ve gotten there through a land crisis,” said Moore.
“We only have the land that we have now, and the land is the host of everything,” said Katherine Moore, president of the Georgia Conservancy, during a virtual presentation, Land Use and Impacts on Forestry, at the 2023 Georgia Forestry Conference. “Our built environment, our natural environment, all that we need for industry, for quality of life, for food and water, for wildlife — we are not going to get any more of that land.
That land is itself a limited resource.” Moore led an unprecedented invest- ment for the Georgia Conservancy along- side partners at Georgia Tech: a 50-year land cover analysis for the state of Georgia analyzing the impact that the state’s exceptional growth will have on local land use. While many eyes are pointed at the Atlanta metro area, data collected by the study shows that com- munities across the state, both urban
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