Article

Evaluating the Potential Impact of the Proposed Land Development on Coastal Sage Scrub in Northern Orange County, California

Southern California’s coastal sage scrub vegetation, found in limited coastal lowlands, is directly threatened by habitat loss due to urban sprawl. The West Coyote Hills, located in the city of Fullerton, California, is one of the last existing open coastal scrublands remaining undeveloped in northern Orange County, but it has been proposed for housing development. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential impact of the proposed land development on the remaining coastal sage scrub habitat in the West Coyote Hills area. The analysis was based on a map of vegetation communities, developed from the classification of field inventory data, and a map of the proposed housing tracts from the Revised Environmental Impact Report for the study area. FRAGSTATS was used in conjunction with these maps to quantify the possible changes in landscape composition and spatial configuration. The results indicated that the landscape would become highly fragmented with a great amount of loss of scrub vegetation. The remaining vegetation patches would become smaller, more isolated, and less contiguous. Both coastal sage scrub (CSS) and disturbed coastal sage scrub (dCSS) were examined at the class and patch levels. The results showed that 84 CSS patches over 45 ha and 78 dCSS patches over 9 ha would be lost to the development. The changes in patch extent and patch size distribution of CSS would be more substantial than those of dCSS. Many large CSS patches would be reduced, and the allowable distance for organisms to move within the patches would decrease.

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