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theses

This study investigates the relationship between road characteristics and the surrounding landscapes, using as a framework for analysis the history of construction methods and landscape architecture’s once prominent role in road design. This research seeks to expand the scale of focus from the species-level, typical of much road ecology scholarship, to a regional, road network-scale analysis. As roads were constructed in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century, design guidelines and safety regulations did not yet exist, resulting in demonstrably different shapes and forms of roads. Since then, many roads have been widened and straightened, but original alignments remain part of many of our federal and state highways. This research seeks to answer the question: Are the different construction methods preserved in the patterns and composition of the surrounding landscapes, and in the shapes of the roads themselves? Is the role of the landscape architect in road design visible in the road network patterns of the landscape? Can these differences be measured? Using tools from the field of landscape ecology to study the Appalachian region of North Carolina, this study found that among five road categories—interstates, US highways, state highways, secondary routes, and federal parkways—measureable differences in land cover, terrain, and road form are present. A spatial regression in ArcGIS explored the strength of relationships between road characteristics such as sinuosity, elevation change, traffic count, road width, and other variables and land cover present within three different distances from the roads. A visual assessment of one road from each of the five categories was also conducted to test assumptions about road type and to compare to the road characteristics database.

ETD_7228

M.L.A.

Includes bibliographical references

by Ellen Oettinger

doi:10.7282/T3KH0QHZ

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.