Land cover and topography affect the land transformation caused by wind facilities.

Land transformation (ha of surface disturbance/MW) associated with wind facilities shows wide variation in its reported values. In addition, no studies have attempted to explain the variation across facilities. We digitized land transformation at 39 wind facilities using high resolution aerial imagery.

Roadless space of the conterminous United States.

Roads encroaching into undeveloped areas generally degrade ecological and watershed conditions and simultaneously provide access to natural resources, land parcels for development, and recreation. A metric of roadless space is needed for monitoring the balance between these ecological costs and societal benefits. We introduce a metric, roadless volume (RV), which is derived from the calculated distance to the nearest road.