Urban green. Integrating ecosystem extent and condition data in urban ecosystem accounts. Examples from the Oslo region

The article enhances the knowledge base for the assessment of urban ecosystem services, within the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), recently adopted as an international statistical standard. The SEEA EA is based on spatial extent accounts (area of ecosystems) and biophysical condition accounts (ecological state of ecosystems). Case studies from the Oslo region are explored, combining land use/land cover maps from Statistics Norway with satellite data. The results illustrate that a combination of land use/land cover data for ecosystem extent and detailed satellite data of land cover provides a much higher quality for the interpretation of extent and condition variables. This is not only a result of applying spatial analysis, but a result of applying knowledge about the information categories from satellite data of land cover, to official statistics for built-up land in urban areas that until now have not been identified. Moreover, the choice of spatial units should reflect that modelling of different ecosystem services, as a basis for trade-offs in urban planning, requires a combination of different spatial approaches to capture urban green elements.

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The impacts of land use/land cover changes on the supply-demand budget of urban ecosystem services

Arabian Journal of Geosciences ◽

10.1007/s12517-021-07504-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (14) ◽

Author(s):

Syed Atif Bokhari ◽

Zafeer Saqib ◽

Amjad Ali ◽

Arif Mahmud ◽

Nadia Akhtar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Urban Ecosystem Services

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Multi-Temporal Landsat8 Satellite Data Based Crops and Other Land Use Spatial Estimation in Okara District of Pakistan

10.20944/preprints201808.0344.v2 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar ◽

Athar Hussain ◽

Kashif Javed ◽

Hammad Ghazanfar

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

Satellite Data ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Integrated Approach ◽

Kappa Statistics ◽

Digital Information ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Land Utilization ◽

Cropping Patterns

Developing countries like Pakistan is among those where lack of adoption to science and technology advancement is a major constraint for Satellite Remote Sensing use in crops and land use land cover digital information generation. Exponential rise in country population, increased food demand, limiting natural resources coupled with migration of rural community to urban areas had further led to skewed official statistics. This study is an attempt to demonstrate the possible use of freely available satellite data like Landsat8 under complex cropping system of Okara district of Punjab, Pakistan. An Integrated approach has been developed for the satellite data based crops and land use/cover spatial area estimation. The resultant quality was found above 96% with Kappa statistics of 0.95. Land utilization statistics provided detail information about cropping patterns as well as land use land cover status. Rice was recorded as most dominating crop in term of cultivation area of around 0.165 million ha followed by autumn maize 0.074 million ha, Fallow crop fields 0.067 million ha and Sorghum 0.047 million ha. Other minor crops observed were potato, fodder and cotton being cultivated on less than 0.010 million ha. Population settlements were observed over an area of around 0.081 million ha of land. 

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Landsat8 Based Crops and Other Land Use Mapping in Okara District of Pakistan

10.20944/preprints201808.0344.v1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar ◽

Athar Hussain ◽

Kashif Javed ◽

Hammad Ghazanfar

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

Satellite Data ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Integrated Approach ◽

Kappa Statistics ◽

Digital Information ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Land Utilization ◽

Cropping Patterns

Developing countries like Pakistan is among those where lack of adoption to science and technology advancement is major constraint for Satellite Remote Sensing use in crops and land use land cover digital information generation. Exponential rise in country population, increased food demand, limiting natural resources coupled with migration of rural community to urban areas had further led to skewed official statistics. This study is an attempt to demonstrate the possible use of freely available satellite data like Landsat8 under complex cropping system of Okara district of Punjab, Pakistan. An Integrated approach has been developed for the satellite data based crops and land use/cover spatial area estimation. The resultant quality was found above 96% with Kappa statistics of 0.95. Land utilization statistics provided detail information about cropping patterns as well as land use land cover status. Rice was recorded as most dominating crop in term of cultivation area of around 0.165 million ha followed by autumn maize 0.074 million ha, Fallow crop fields 0.067 million ha and Sorghum 0.047 million ha. Other minor crops observed were potato, fodder and cotton being cultivated on less than 0.010 million ha. Population settlements were observed over an area of around 0.081 million ha of land. 

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Quantifying Land Use Land Cover Changes in the Lake Victoria Basin Using Satellite Remote Sensing: The Trends and Drivers between 1985 and 2014

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12172829 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (17) ◽

pp. 2829 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robinson Mugo ◽

Rose Waswa ◽

James W. Nyaga ◽

Antony Ndubi ◽

Emily C. Adams ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Lake Victoria ◽

Small Scale ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Lake Victoria Basin ◽

Basin Scale

The Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) is a significant resource for five states within East Africa, which faces major land use land cover changes that threaten ecosystem integrity and ecosystem services derived from the basin’s resources. To assess land use land cover changes between 1985 and 2014, and subsequently determine the trends and drivers of these changes, we used a series of Landsat images and field data obtained from the LVB. Landsat image pre-processing and band combinations were done in ENVI 5.1. A supervised classification was applied on 118 Landsat scenes using the maximum likelihood classifier in ENVI 5.1. The overall accuracy of classified images was computed for the 2014 images using 124 reference data points collected through stratified random sampling. Computations of area under various land cover classes were calculated between the 1985 and 2014 images. We also correlated the area from natural vegetation classes to farmlands and settlements (urban areas) to explore relationships between land use land cover conversions among these classes. Based on our land cover classifications, we obtained overall accuracy of 71% and a moderate Kappa statistic of 0.56. Our results indicate that the LVB has undergone drastic changes in land use land cover, mainly driven by human activities that led to the conversion of forests, woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands to either farmlands or settlements. We conclude that information from this work is useful not only for basin-scale assessments and monitoring of land cover changes but also for targeting, prioritizing, and monitoring of small scale, community led efforts to restore degraded and fragmented areas in the basin. Such efforts could mitigate the loss of ecosystem services previously derived from large contiguous land covers which are no longer tenable to restore. We recommend adoption of a basin scale, operational, Earth observation-based, land use change monitoring framework. Such a framework can facilitate rapid and frequent assessments of gains and losses in specific land cover classes and thus focus strategic interventions in areas experiencing major losses, through mitigation and compensatory approaches.

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How Ecosystem Services Can Strengthen the Regeneration Policies for Monumental Olive Groves Destroyed by Xylella fastidiosa Bacterium in a Peri-Urban Area

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13168778 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (16) ◽

pp. 8778

Author(s):

Teodoro Semeraro ◽

Elisa Gatto ◽

Riccardo Buccolieri ◽

Valentina Catanzaro ◽

Luigi De Bellis ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Cultural Heritage ◽

Urban Area ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Xylella Fastidiosa ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Olive Groves ◽

Olive Trees

The Apulian Region (Italy) is a socio-ecological system shaped by the millennial co-evolution between human actions and ecological processes. It is characterized by monumental olive groves protected from Regional Law 14/2007 for the cultural value of the landscape, currently threatened by the spread of a devastating phytopathogen, the bacteria Xylella fastidiosa. The aim of this paper is to apply landscape resilience analysis focusing on ecosystem services to understand the potential effects and trade-offs of regeneration policies in a peri-urban area characterized by monumental olive groves land cover. The study involved land-cover and land-use analysis, supported by a survey on the inhabitants and an ecosystem services analysis. The results showed a mismatch between the agroecosystem and the social and economic use linked to leisure or hospitality. The study area was defined as a peri-urban landscape characterized by tourist use. From the interviews of the users, the cultural heritage of olive groves seems linked to the presence of olive trees like a status quo of the landscape and olive oil productions. The culture aspect could thus be preserved by changing the type of olive trees. In addition, the analysis showed that the microclimate could be preserved and enhanced in terms of air temperature and thermal comfort, by replacing the olive trees with varieties resistant to Xylella, such as cv. Leccino. Therefore, regeneration policies that promote replacing dead olive groves with new olive trees could be efficient to stimulate social components of the landscape and improve the resilience of ecosystem services in peri-urban areas in the interest of the cultural heritage of the users and benefits that they provide. An ecosystem services analysis at a local scale could be a strategy for an integrated regenerate approach between land-use and land-cover with social, ecological, and economic evolutions vision orientated to a sustainable and desirable future.

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The impact of land use/land cover scale on modelling urban ecosystem services

Landscape Ecology ◽

10.1007/s10980-015-0337-7 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 31 (7) ◽

pp. 1509-1522 ◽

Cited By ~ 55

Author(s):

Darren R. Grafius ◽

Ron Corstanje ◽

Philip H. Warren ◽

Karl L. Evans ◽

Steven Hancock ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Urban Ecosystem ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Urban Ecosystem Services ◽

The Impact

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Variations in ecosystem service value in response to land use/land cover changes in Central Asia from 1995–2035

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.7665 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

pp. e7665 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jiangyue Li ◽

Hongxing Chen ◽

Chi Zhang ◽

Tao Pan

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Central Asia ◽

Ecosystem Service ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Water Bodies ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Rapid Urbanization

Acute farmland expansion and rapid urbanization in Central Asia have accelerated land use/land cover changes, which have substantial effects on ecosystem services. However, the spatiotemporal variations in ecosystem service values (ESVs) in Central Asia are not well understood. Here, based on land use products with 300-m resolution for the years 1995, 2005 and 2015 and transfer methodology, we predicted land use and land cover (LULC) for 2025 and 2035 using CA-Markov, assessed changes in ESVs in response to LULC dynamics, and explored the elasticity of the response of ESV to LULC changes. We found significant expansions of cropland (+22.10%) and urban areas (+322.40%) and shrinking of water bodies (−38.43%) and bare land (−9.42%) during 1995–2035. The combined value of ecosystem services of water bodies, cropland, and grassland accounted for over 90% of the total ESVs. Our study showed that cropland ecosystem services value increased by 93.45 billion US$ from 1995 to 2035, which was mainly caused by the expansion of cropland area. However, the area of water bodies decreased sharply during 1995–2035, causing a loss of 64.38 billion US$. Biodiversity, food production and water regulation were major ecosystem service functions, accounting for 80.52% of the total ESVs. Our results demonstrated that effective land-use policies should be made to control farmland expansion and protect water bodies, grassland and forestland for more sustainable ecosystem services.

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