The U.S. population has grown increasingly urban each decade, from 28 percent in 1910 to 80 percent in 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). In the Chesapeake watershed alone, residential development is predicted to consume 800,000 acres between 2003 and 2030, nearly 90 percent of it replacing farmland (Boesch and Greer, 2003). As urban communities grow larger and faster than ever before, natural resource management in these areas becomes crucial for achieving sustainable development and maintaining and enhancing the quality of life and the environment.

Jared Diamond (2005), in his book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” defines landscape amnesia as one of the primary mechanisms for the decline and ultimate collapse of societies. This phenomenon occurs when people lose knowledge of how the natural world once was, with each succeeding generation accepting a degraded environment as the status quo. Carried to its end, a society remains unconcerned until it reaches the point of no return.