​I live in Saratoga County in upstate New York, one of the fastest growing areas in the US. I do not claim disappearing habitat as a cause of colony loss. 


Maybe therein lies the problem?  
While your area is declining  data shows nationwide the exact opposite trend.  Has for better than 50 years despite rising populations.
I am quite sure some areas do lose,  but others seem to gain at good rates. ( I need to dig into NY in particular but at 1% ag and 8% pasture ground its not been worth worrying about)

So maybe my real confusion is why someone like the paper above would use that info,  when it's not really correct on the whole?  
Is it okay for researchers to cherry pick casual observations to sensationalize their work?  Maybe that’s the real issue.

I completely understand there are always winners and loser in the trends.  Populated areas such as yours are going to continue to expand while each tries to get their piece of the pie,  but in other areas drainages get bigger, marginal grounds are reverted, and things are the same as they have been for the last 50+ years of my life.

While fields are a bit cleaner of weeds than they were in the past,  since those weeds were never pollinator weeds to begin with I see no change really.  If anything there is a lot more CRP  and a few more houses.


https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-and-state-rankings-of-major-land-uses.aspx

The above is the basic land use for NY.  Unfortunately its one of the states that’s not been updated yet as I see it.(all new updates were due in 2017 but not all are posted yet)

It does appear that there are some formatting changes in how the data is presented,  and I have not quite found the correct references for historical data yet.  They have switched over to something called geospatial and I haven’t mastered navigating it yet.

Charles

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