Integrating demographic and Landsat (TM) data at a watershed scale

Recurrent calls for integrated resource management urge that an understandi ng of human activities and populations be incorporated into natural resourc e research, management, and protection efforts. In this paper, we hypothesi ze that watersheds can be a valuable geography for organizing an inquiry in to the relationship between humans and the environment, and we present a fr amework for conducting such efforts. The framework is grounded in the emerg ing field of landscape ecology and incorporates demographic theory and data . Demography has been advanced by technological capabilities associated wit h the 1990 Census. Employing Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, we couple Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) land cover data with census-derived hou sing density data to demonstrate the operation of our framework and its uti lity for better understanding human-landscape interactions. In our investig ation of the Kickapoo Watershed and two sub-watersheds, located in southwes tern Wisconsin, we identify relationships between landscape composition and the distribution and social structure of human populations. Our findings o ffer insight into the interplay between people and biophysical systems.