scholarly journals The impact of urbanization expansion on agricultural land in Ethiopia: A review

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Assefa Ayele ◽  
Kassa Tarekegn

AbstractIn a country like Ethiopia where the vast majority of the populations are employed in agriculture, land is an important economic resource for the development of rural livelihoods. Agricultural land in peri-urban areas is, however, transformed into built-up regions through horizontal urban expansion that has an effect on land use value. In recent years Ethiopia has been experiencing rapid urbanization, which has led to an ever-increasing demand for land in peri-urban areas for housing and other nonagricultural activities that pervades agricultural land. There is a high demand for informal and illegal peri-urban land which has been held by peri-urban farmers, and this plays a vital role in the unauthorized and sub-standard house construction on agricultural land. This urbanization has not been extensively reviewed and documented. In this review an attempt has been made to assess the impacts of rapid urbanization on agricultural activities. Urban expansion has reduced the areas available for agriculture, which has seriously impacted upon peri-urban farmers that are often left with little or no land to cultivate and which has increased their vulnerability. Housing encroachments have been observed to be uncontrolled due to a weak government response to the trend of unplanned city expansion. This has left peri-urban farmers exposed to the negative shocks of urbanization because significant urbanization-related agricultural land loss has a positive correlation with grain production decrease. Appropriate governing bodies should control urban development in order to control the illegal and informal spread of urbanization on agricultural land that threatens food production.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Rabina Twayana ◽  
Sijan Bhandari ◽  
Reshma Shrestha

Nepal is considered one of the rapidly urbanizing countries in south Asia. Most of the urbanization is dominated in large and medium cities i.e., metropolitan, sub-metropolitan, and municipalities. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies in the sector of urban land governance are growing day by day due to their capability of mapping, analyzing, detecting changes, etc. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the urban growth pattern in Banepa Municipality during three decades (1992-2020) using freely available Landsat imageries and explore driving factors for change in the urban landscape using the AHP model. The Banepa municipality is taken as a study area as it is one of the growing urban municipalities in the context of Nepal. The supervised image classification was applied to classify the acquired satellite image data. The generated results from this study illustrate that urbanization is gradually increasing from 1992 to 2012 while, majority of the urban expansion happened during 2012-2020, and it is still growing rapidly along the major roads in a concentric pattern. This study also demonstrates the responsible driving factors for continuous urban growth during the study period. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was adopted to analyze the impact of drivers which reveals that, Internal migration (57%) is major drivers for change in urban dynamics whereas, commercialization (25%), population density (16%), and real estate business (5%) are other respective drivers for alteration of urban land inside the municipality. To prevent rapid urbanization in this municipality, the concerned authorities must take initiative for proper land use planning and its implementation on time. Recently, Nepal Government has endorsed Land Use Act 2019 for preventing the conversion of agricultural land into haphazard urban growth.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inês Amorim Leitão ◽  
Carla Sofia Santos Ferreira ◽  
António José Dinis Ferreira

<p>Land-use changes affect the properties of ecosystems, and are typically associated with decreasing ability to supply services, which in turn causes a decrease in the social well-being. Urbanization is identified as one of the main causes of ecosystem degradation, once it is considered an artificial space that replaces natural areas.This study investigates the impact of land-use changes during 20 years (1995-2015) on the potential supply of ecosystem services in Coimbra municipality, central Portugal. The assessment was based on the evaluation performed by 31 experts familiar with the study area, through questionnaires. The experts ranked the potential supply of 31 ecosystem services, grouped in regulation, provisioning and cultural services, for the several land-uses existent. Experts performed a qualitative evaluation, considering ‘strong adverse potential’, ‘weak adverse potential’, ‘not relevant’, ‘low positive potential’ and ‘strong positive potential’. The qualitative evaluation was converted into a quantitative classification (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2). Quantitative values were then used to develop an ecosystem services quantification matrix and to map the information in the study area, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). An urban expansion from 14% to 18% was recorded over the last 20 years. Agricultural land decreased 8% due to conversion into forest (4% increase) and urban areas (4% increase). This has led to a decrease in the supply of provision (e.g. food) and regulation services (e.g. flood regulation). In fact, over the last years, recurrent floods have been increasingly noticed in Coimbra city. On the other hand, the growth of forest areas has led to an increase in general ESs supply. The adverse impacts of urbanization were partially compensated by enlarging the benefits provided by forest areas, which is the land-use with greatest ESs potential supply. In order to support urban planning and develop sustainable cities, it is essential to quantify the potential supply of ecosystem services considering local scale and characteristics.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinli Ke ◽  
Liye Wang ◽  
Yanchun Ma ◽  
Kunpeng Pu ◽  
Ting Zhou ◽  
...  

Land use and land cover change is a critical factor of ecosystem services, while water yield plays a vital role in sustainable development. The impact of urban expansion on water yield has long been discussed, but water yield change resulting from cropland protection is seldom concerned. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of cropland protection on water yield by comparing the water yield in two cropland protection scenarios (i.e., Strict Cropland Protection scenario and No Cropland Protection scenario). Specifically, the LAND System Cellular Automata for Potential Effects (LANDSCAPE) model was employed to simulate land use maps in the two scenarios, while Water Yield module in the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model was used to calculate water yield. The results show water yield would increase by 8.7 × 107 m3 in the No Cropland Protection scenario and 9.4 × 107 m3 in the Strict Cropland Protection scenario. We conclude that implementation of strict cropland protection in rapid urbanizing areas may cause more water yield, which is also a prerequisite of potential urban flooding risk. This study throws that it is not wise to implement strict cropland protection policy in an area of rapid urbanization.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 996
Author(s):  
Bonoua Faye ◽  
Guoming Du

The study aims to reveal the transition features of agricultural land use in the Groundnut Basin of Senegal from 2009 to 2018, especially the impact of urbanization on agricultural land and the viewpoint of farmland spatiotemporal evolution. Integrated data of time series MCD12Q1 land-use images of 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2018 were used to provide a land transition in agricultural and urban areas through the synergistic methodology. Socio-economic data was also used to serve as a basis for the argument. The results highlight that: (1) Agricultural land increased by 14.53%, with a dynamic index of 1.45 from 2009–2018. (2) Over the same period, urbanization increased by 2.80%, with a dynamic index of 0.28. (3) In different regions, the transition of agricultural land in Kaffrine is most intense (expansion rate: 22.80%). The same situation of urbanization happened in Thiès Region with a value of 7.94%. Except for Thiès, agricultural land in other regions has not yet been subject to major pressure due to urbanization. Overall, the farming system in Groundnut Basin is an extensive model, the recommendations from the point of view of land-use planning and land law are necessary to ensure efficient agricultural land management in the area.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1870
Author(s):  
Jingyi Wang ◽  
Caihong Hu ◽  
Bingyan Ma ◽  
Xiaoling Mu

Changes in the hydrological process caused by urbanization lead to frequent flooding in cities. For fast-growing urban areas, the impact of urbanization on the hydrological process needs to be systematically analyzed. This study takes Zhengzhou as an example to analyze the impact of urbanization on the hydrological process based on 1971–2012 hourly rainfall-runoff data, combining Geographic Information Systems with traditional hydrological methods. Our study indicates that the rain island effect in different districts of city became stronger with the increase of its built-up. The uneven land use resulted in the difference of runoff process. The flood peak lag was 25–30% earlier with the change of land use. The change of flood peak increased by 10–30% with the change of built-up. The runoff coefficient increases by 20–35% with the increase of built-up, and its change increased with the change of land use. Affected by the rain island effect, precipitation tends to occur in areas where built-up is dominant, which overall magnifies the impact of urbanization on the hydrological process. This provides new ideas for urban flood control. Refine flood control standards according to regional land use changes to cope with the hydrological process after urbanization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terwase Shabu ◽  
Sussan Fate ◽  
Mfanyo Keziah Ukula

This study assessed the Impact of Urbanization on Agricultural Land in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State. The data collected were population figures and land use for three Epoch (1997, 2007 and 2017). The satellite images were sourced from the National Center for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System, Jos. In the analysis, cross change detection analysis and overlay analysis using ArcGIS 9.0 was performed to detect where land-use change has occurred and which type of land use agricultural land has transformed too. The GIS analysis revealed that there is an increase in settlement and a decrease in Agricultural land from 1997 – 2017. It also revealed that 99.51ha of agricultural land use has been converted to settlement between 1997 and 2017. The results reveal that urbanization has significant effects on Agricultural Land in the study area and these effects include; decreasing agricultural land, decreasing agricultural activities and decrease in farm size. If the growth in the population of Makurdi LGA continues unchecked, agricultural land will be significantly depleted in the future. The study recommended that there should be effective law and policy to control population growth sustainably to minimize the negative impact of urbanization in the study area. Also, urban agriculture should be encouraged to sustain the food supply in urban areas.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Ren ◽  
Chunyang He ◽  
Qingxu Huang ◽  
Yuyu Zhou

Urbanization can affect the ecological processes, local climate and human health in urban areas by changing the vegetation phenology. In the past 20 years, China has experienced rapid urbanization. Thus, it is imperative to understand the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology in China. In this study, we quantitatively analyzed the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology at the national and climate zone scales using remotely sensed data. We found that the start of the growing season (SOS) was advanced by approximately 2.4 days (P < 0.01), and the end of the growing season (EOS) was delayed by approximately 0.7 days (P < 0.01) in the urban areas compared to the rural areas. As a result, the growing season length (GSL) was extended by approximately 3.1 days (P < 0.01). The difference in the SOS and GSL between the urban and rural areas increased from 2001 to 2014, with an annual rate of 0.2 days (R2 = 0.39, P < 0.05) and 0.2 days (R2 = 0.31, P < 0.05), respectively. We also found that the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology varied among different vegetation types at the national and climate zone levels (P < 0.05). The SOS was negatively correlated with land surface temperature (LST), with a correlation coefficient of −0.24 (P < 0.01), and EOS and GSL were positively correlated with LST, with correlation coefficients of 0.56 and 0.44 (P < 0.01), respectively. The improved understanding of the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology from this study will be of great help for policy-makers in terms of developing relevant strategies to mitigate the negative environmental effects of urbanization in China.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 10211
Author(s):  
Xiang Pan ◽  
Peiji Shi ◽  
Na Wu

Clarifying the spatial interaction relationship between urbanization and multiple ecosystem services (ESs) is a prerequisite for reducing the impact of urbanization on the ecological environment and coordinating urbanization and ecological environmental protection. Urbanization is especially significant for ecologically fragile areas, where ecosystems are particularly sensitive to changes in urban patterns. This study considered the Lan–Xi (LX) urban agglomeration in three natural transitional regions using socio-economic, ecological environment, and other data, through a variety of methods, to supersede administrative boundaries and to explore the relationship between urbanization and ESs on a grid scale. The results revealed a significant negative spatial correlation between the levels of urbanization and comprehensive ESs, indicating that rapid urbanization has led to a decline in regional ESs. However, with the rapid urbanization trend from 2010 to 2018, the ESs in the LX region showed an upward trend because the implementation of ecological protection and restoration projects greatly offset the decline in ESs caused by urban expansion. We found a positive correlation between nutrient purification and the levels of urbanization among various ESs and four principal types of spatial–temporal interactions between ESs and urbanization levels. Among them, the high–high cluster areas occupied the smallest proportion, and the low–low cluster areas occupied the largest proportion.


2013 ◽  
Vol 91 (8) ◽  
pp. 554-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafał Łopucki ◽  
Iwona Mróz ◽  
Łukasz Berliński ◽  
Marzena Burzych

Theories concerning the impact of urbanization on ground-dwelling mammals are mainly based on large-city studies. We investigated whether the negative effects of urbanization are evident in smaller urban areas, where green areas are usually less isolated from their natural surroundings. Livetrapping of small mammals (Rodentia and Soricomorpha) was conducted between 2007 and 2010 in 15 patches within the city of Lublin (Poland) (147.5 km2, population 354 000) and 15 patches in its agricultural surroundings. A decline in species richness and diversity along an urbanization gradient and an increase in the abundance of species best adapted to the city environment (synurbic species) were observed. The main factors influencing ground-dwelling mammals was isolation of green patches, while the management type of green areas had no significant effect. The genus Apodemus Kaup, 1829, particularly the striped field mouse (Apodemus agrarius (Pallas, 1771)), was the most urban biased. Within the city, A. agrarius alters its habitat preferences and life-history parameters (body mass, seasonal fluctuations, winter survival). Understanding the factors influencing ground-dwelling mammals in medium-sized cities will enable measures to be implemented that could reduce the negative effects of urbanization during urban expansion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulla Al Kafy ◽  
Abdullah Al-Faisal ◽  
Mohammad Mahmudul Hasan ◽  
Md. Soumik Sikdar ◽  
Mohammad Hasib Hasan Khan ◽  
...  

Urbanization has been contributing more in global climate warming, with more than 50% of the population living in cities. Rapid population growth and change in land use / land cover (LULC) are closely linked. The transformation of LULC due to rapid urban expansion significantly affects the functions of biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as local and regional climates. Improper planning and uncontrolled management of LULC changes profoundly contribute to the rise of urban land surface temperature (LST). This study evaluates the impact of LULC changes on LST for 1997, 2007 and 2017 in the Rajshahi district (Bangladesh) using multi-temporal and multi-spectral Landsat 8 OLI and Landsat 5 TM satellite data sets. The analysis of LULC changes exposed a remarkable increase in the built-up areas and a significant decrease in the vegetation and agricultural land. The built-up area was increased almost double in last 20 years in the study area. The distribution of changes in LST shows that built-up areas recorded the highest temperature followed by bare land, vegetation and agricultural land and water bodies. The LULC-LST profiles also revealed the highest temperature in built-up areas and the lowest temperature in water bodies. In the last 20 years, LST was increased about 13ºC. The study demonstrates decrease in vegetation cover and increase in non-evaporating surfaces with significantly increases the surface temperature in the study area. Remote-sensing techniques were found one of the suitable techniques for rapid analysis of urban expansions and to identify the impact of urbanization on LST.


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