AN INVESTIGATION OF RIPARIAN LAND USE CHANGES ADJACENT TO THE MULBERRY RIVER AND BIG PINEY CREEK FROM 1936, 1967, AND 2001, OZARK-ST. FRANCIS NATIONAL FORESTS, ARKANSAS

The Mulberry River and the Big Piney Creek stream systems are two outstanding natural water resources in Arkansas that have a rich heritage of settlement patterns, resource extraction, private land management (predominantly agriculture) and federal government (public lands) management. Research has pointed to the importance of forested landscapes in Arkansas for producing high quality water resources, especially in crucial riparian areas. A direct relationship exists between the forested area of a watershed and the quality of the water resource in Arkansas (Miller and Leichty, 2001; Miller, 1986). Forest land uses within streamside areas are imperative for high quality water resources and aquatic system integrity. Archived information is available that can be used to describe land uses changes between the years of 1936 and 2004. We intend to classify the land use occurring in streamside corridors and assess changes at two sites for this time period. This type of information is necessary to provide land managers with a historic context for developing land management strategy and decisions.

Two streamside corridors were analyzed for land use changes, one on the Mulberry River and another on Big Piney Creek. The first analysis was a reconstruction of land use for the years 1936, 1967, and 2001. Agriculture, forest, and water landuse categories were manually digitized from historical aerial photography compiled within a GIS framework. The second analysis utilized 1999 and 2004 Land Use\Land Cover (LULC) datasets to discern streamside land use changes. Methods for successfully assessing streamside land uses since 1936 were determined. Landuse reconstructions for 1936 - 2001 yield an increase in overall forest landuse from 47% to 71 % on the Mulberry River site, and 57% to 71% on the Big Piney Creek. LULC derived change detection exhibit a decline in overall forest landuse on both the Mulberry River site (78% to 76%) and Big Piney Creek site (83% to 79%).