The Counties District: land use trends and issues

1997 ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
Murray Auld
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Rural Environment ◽  
Land Resources ◽  
High Quality

The Counties District has traditionally been regarded as the food bowl of Auckland. Its high quality land resources, equitable climate and proximity to markets have and are still playing an important part in producing milk, vegetables and meat all year round. However, as Auckland continues to grow and people continue to want to live and pay to live in a rural environment the character and future of this food producing bowl is under threat. Keywords: Auckland, Counties District, land use, urban expansion

scholarly journals Unraveling Latent Aspects of Urban Expansion: Desertification Risk Reveals More

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 4001
Author(s):  
Gianluca Egidi ◽  
Ilaria Zambon ◽  
Ilaria Tombolin ◽  
Luca Salvati ◽  
Sirio Cividino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Soil Quality ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
High Sensitivity ◽  
Sustainable Land Use ◽  
Land Use Patterns ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Regulatory Constraints ◽  
Desertification Risk

Urban expansion results in socioeconomic transformations with relevant impacts for peri-urban soils, leading to environmental concerns about land degradation and increased desertification risk in ecologically fragile districts. Spatial planning can help achieve sustainable land-use patterns and identify alternative locations for settlements and infrastructure. However, it is sometimes unable to comprehend and manage complex processes in metropolitan developments, fueling unregulated and mainly dispersed urban expansion on land with less stringent building constraints. Using the Mediterranean cities of Barcelona and Rome as examples of intense urbanization and ecological fragility, the present study investigated whether land use planning in these cities is (directly or indirectly) oriented towards conservation of soil quality and mitigation of desertification risk. Empirical results obtained using composite, geo-referenced indices of soil quality (SQI) and sensitivity to land desertification (SDI), integrated with high-resolution land zoning maps, indicated that land devoted to natural and semi-natural uses has lower soil quality in both contexts. The highest values of SDI, indicating high sensitivity to desertification, were observed in fringe areas with medium-high population density and settlement expansion. These findings reveal processes of land take involving buildable soils, sometimes of high quality, and surrounding landscapes in both cities. Overall, the results in this study can help inform land use planers and policymakers for conservation of high-quality soils, especially under weak (or partial) regulatory constraints.

Changes in land use in the last two centuries in the Po lowlands (northern Italy)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Meli ◽  
Luigi Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Salt Marshes ◽  
Coastal Wetlands ◽  
Land Reclamation ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Blue Carbon ◽  
Historical Maps ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Seagrass Meadows

<p>Changes in land use represent, after fossil-fuel combustion, the greatest cause of greenhouse-gases emission into the atmosphere. Coastal wetlands, also referred as coastal blue carbon ecosystems (e.g. salt marshes, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, swamps), represent one of the most powerful C sinks among the Earth’s ecosystems, being capable to sequester organic carbon (OC) at rates ca. 30-50 times higher than terrestrial forests. Historically, land reclamation for agriculture, farming and urban expansion, severely impacted coastal wetlands, causing their loss and degradation. Wetlands drainage lead to the oxidation of organic matter previously stored under anaerobic conditions and the release of CO<sub>2</sub> into the atmosphere. Only recently the critical role of blue carbon ecosystems in climate-change mitigation has been recognised, highlighting the importance of protecting and studying these precious environments.</p><p>In this work, changes in land use in the last two centuries are reconstructed through comparison with historical maps. At the beginning of the 19<sup>th</sup> century Napoleon Bonaparte requested the development of high-quality maps of occupied territories. Among these, the so-called ‘Carta del Ferrarese’ (CdF), completed between 1812 and 1814, is composed of 38 sheets and represents, to a scale of 1:15.000, 240.000 hectares of the Po lowlands, roughly corresponding to the present-day Ferrara district. The CdF, archived at the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna, is an extraordinary example among historical maps for its high quality and accuracy, which constitute a two-centuries-old reliable paleo-landscape picture.</p><p>Within the Historical Land Use Change research project, leaded by the Emilia-Romagna Statistical and GIS Service, the CdF was scanned, accurately georeferenced and orthorectified, showing a surprising generalized match with recent maps. More than 31.000 polygons were digitized in a GIS environment and interpreted on the basis of the European Corine Land Cover codes, properly modified for the land uses at the time.</p><p>Comparison with the recent land use analysis, carried out in 2014, highlights changes in land use, mainly related to land reclamation. Salt marshes and swamps, originally extended for 100.000 hectares, were reduced of about 85%, starting from 1861. Major phases of land reclamation occurred in 1870s and 1960s. Geochemical analyses on shallow samples (depth < 50 cm), depict OC content of artificially drained soils < 5% of the total volume. Soil texture testifies to the almost complete mineralization of OC after reclamation. Only recently drained soils show higher OC content, in the range of 10-15%.</p>

scholarly journals Agricultural Land Use Change in Chongqing and the Policy Rationale behind It: A Multiscale Perspective

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Lingyue Li ◽  
Zhixin Qi ◽  
Shi Xian ◽  
Dong Yao
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Land Conversion ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Land Resources ◽  
Gini Coefficients ◽  
The Town ◽  
Land Use Control

Agricultural land resources have been the central issue for the Chinese government in its attempts to secure food and agricultural sustainability. Yet strict land use control does not protect the agricultural land from erosion by urban expansion. Identifying the specific patterns and mechanisms of the agricultural land conversion, thus, is critical for land management and related decision making. Based on the annual nominal 30 m land use/land cover datasets (called CLUD-A), this study goes below the national/regional level to examine agricultural land conversion in Chongqing from a multiscale perspective. At the metropolis and its subdivision’s scales, the volume of the conversion area has been generally increasing, from 122.40 km2 in 1980–1990, 162.26 km2 in 1990–2000, and 706.14 km2 in 2000–2010, to 684.83 km2 in 2010–2015. Such a conversion in the main city area and its surroundings far outweighed that in the rural outskirts, as 68.9% (1990–2000), 92.2% (2000–2010), and 82.7% (2010–2015) of the conversion happened in the former. Moreover, values of Gini coefficients and coefficient of variation (CV) based on the county/district scale (Gini [0.46, 0.64], CV [0.69, 0.99] throughout the four periods) are much lower than those based on the town/village scale (Gini [0.88, 0.94], CV [3.18, 4.47] throughout the four periods), suggesting the uneven extent of spatial distribution of the agricultural land conversion trickles down along with the downscale of administration: the lower the administrative level, the more severe the unbalance. The policy rationale behind this transition is also discussed. This research argues for tangible approaches to a sustainable rural-urban transformation.

scholarly journals Spatial-Temporal Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Urban Areas Using Remote Sensing Images and GIS Analysis: The Case Study of Opole, Poland

Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Barbara Wiatkowska ◽  
Janusz Słodczyk ◽  
Aleksandra Stokowska
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Rate Of Increase ◽  
Management Procedures

Urban expansion is a dynamic and complex phenomenon, often involving adverse changes in land use and land cover (LULC). This paper uses satellite imagery from Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-8 OLI, Sentinel-2 MSI, and GIS technology to analyse LULC changes in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020. The research was carried out in Opole, the capital of the Opole Agglomeration (south-western Poland). Maps produced from supervised spectral classification of remote sensing data revealed that in 20 years, built-up areas have increased about 40%, mainly at the expense of agricultural land. Detection of changes in the spatial pattern of LULC showed that the highest average rate of increase in built-up areas occurred in the zone 3–6 km (11.7%) and above 6 km (10.4%) from the centre of Opole. The analysis of the increase of built-up land in relation to the decreasing population (SDG 11.3.1) has confirmed the ongoing process of demographic suburbanisation. The paper shows that satellite imagery and GIS can be a valuable tool for local authorities and planners to monitor the scale of urbanisation processes for the purpose of adapting space management procedures to the changing environment.

scholarly journals Toward a Dualistic Growth? Population Increase and Land-Use Change in Rome, Italy

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 749
Author(s):  
Leonardo Bianchini ◽  
Gianluca Egidi ◽  
Ahmed Alhuseen ◽  
Adele Sateriano ◽  
Sirio Cividino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Per Capita

The spatial mismatch between population growth and settlement expansion is at the base of current models of urban growth. Empirical evidence is increasingly required to inform planning measures promoting urban containment in the context of a stable (or declining) population. In these regards, per-capita indicators of land-use change can be adopted with the aim at evaluating long-term sustainability of urbanization processes. The present study assesses spatial variations in per-capita indicators of land-use change in Rome, Central Italy, at five years (1949, 1974, 1999, 2008, and 2016) with the final objective of quantifying the mismatch between urban expansion and population growth. Originally specialized in agricultural productions, Rome’s metropolitan area is a paradigmatic example of dispersed urban expansion in the Mediterranean basin. By considering multiple land-use dynamics, per-capita indicators of landscape change delineated three distinctive waves of growth corresponding with urbanization, suburbanization, and a more mixed stage with counter-urbanization and re-urbanization impulses. By reflecting different socioeconomic contexts on a local scale, urban fabric and forests were identified as the ‘winner’ classes, expanding homogeneously over time at the expense of cropland. Agricultural landscapes experienced a more heterogeneous trend with arable land and pastures declining systematically and more fragmented land classes (e.g., vineyards and olive groves) displaying stable (or slightly increasing) trends. The continuous reduction of per-capita surface area of cropland that’s supports a reduced production base, which is now insufficient to satisfy the rising demand for fresh food at the metropolitan scale, indicates the unsustainability of the current development in Rome and more generally in the whole Mediterranean basin, a region specialized traditionally in (proximity) agricultural productions.

scholarly journals Sources of and Control Measures for PTE Pollution in Soil at the Urban Fringe in Weinan, China

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 762
Author(s):  
Lei Han ◽  
Rui Chen ◽  
Zhao Liu ◽  
Shanshan Chang ◽  
Yonghua Zhao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Pollution Sources ◽  
Urban Fringe ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Kriging Interpolation Method ◽  
The Impact

The environment of the urban fringe is complex and frangible. With the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, the urban fringe has become the primary space for urban expansion, and the intense human activities create a high risk of potentially toxic element (PTE) pollution in the soil. In this study, 138 surface soil samples were collected from a region undergoing rapid urbanization and construction—Weinan, China. Concentrations of As, Pb, Cr, Cu, and Ni (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry, ICP-MS) and Hg (Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry, AFS) were measured. The Kriging interpolation method was used to create a visualization of the spatial distribution characteristics and to analyze the pollution sources of PTEs in the soil. The pollution status of PTEs in the soil was evaluated using the national environmental quality standards for soils in different types of land use. The results show that the content range of As fluctuated a small amount and the coefficient of variation is small and mainly comes from natural soil formation. The content of Cr, Cu, and Ni around the automobile repair factory, the prefabrication factory, and the building material factory increased due to the deposition of wear particles in the soil. A total of 13.99% of the land in the study area had Hg pollution, which was mainly distributed on category 1 development land and farmland. Chemical plants were the main pollution sources. The study area should strictly control the industrial pollution emissions, regulate the agricultural production, adjust the land use planning, and reduce the impact of pollution on human beings. Furthermore, we make targeted remediation suggestions for each specific land use type. These results are of theoretical significance, will be of practical value for the control of PTEs in soil, and will provide ecological environmental protection in the urban fringe throughout the urbanization process.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal Influence of Land Use/Land Cover Change Dynamics on Surface Urban Heat Island: A Case Study of Abuja Metropolis, Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
Auwalu Faisal Koko ◽  
Wu Yue ◽  
Ghali Abdullahi Abubakar ◽  
Akram Ahmed Noman Alabsi ◽  
Roknisadeh Hamed
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Sustainable Land Use ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Urban Heat

Rapid urbanization in cities and urban centers has recently contributed to notable land use/land cover (LULC) changes, affecting both the climate and environment. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze changes in LULC and its spatiotemporal influence on the surface urban heat islands (UHI) in Abuja metropolis, Nigeria. To achieve this, we employed Multi-temporal Landsat data to monitor the study area’s LULC pattern and land surface temperature (LST) over the last 29 years. The study then analyzed the relationship between LULC, LST, and other vital spectral indices comprising NDVI and NDBI using correlation analysis. The results revealed a significant urban expansion with the transformation of 358.3 sq. km of natural surface into built-up areas. It further showed a considerable increase in the mean LST of Abuja metropolis from 30.65 °C in 1990 to 32.69 °C in 2019, with a notable increase of 2.53 °C between 2009 and 2019. The results also indicated an inverse relationship between LST and NDVI and a positive connection between LST and NDBI. This implies that urban expansion and vegetation decrease influences the development of surface UHI through increased LST. Therefore, the study’s findings will significantly help urban-planners and decision-makers implement sustainable land-use strategies and management for the city.

scholarly journals Study on the Urban Fringe Based on the Expansion–Shrinking Dynamic Pattern

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5718
Author(s):  
Changqing Sui ◽  
Wei Lu
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Urban Fringe ◽  
Spatial Form ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Ecological Protection

The urban fringe, as a part of an urban spatial form, plays a considerably major role in urban expansion and shrinking. After decades of rapid development, Chinese cities have advanced from a simple expansion stage to an expansion–shrinking-coexistence stage. In urban shrinking and expansion, the urban fringe shows different characteristics and requirements for specific aspects such as urban planning, land use, urban landscape, ecological protection, and architectural form, thereby forming expanding and shrinking urban fringes. A comprehensive study of expanding and shrinking urban fringes and their patterns is theoretically significant for urban planning, land use, planning management, and ecological civilisation construction.

scholarly journals Elevated Risk of Ecological Land and Underlying Factors Associated with Rapid Urbanization and Overprotected Agriculture in Northeast China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 6203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhan Liu ◽  
Dongyan Wang ◽  
Guoping Lei ◽  
Hong Li ◽  
Wenbo Li
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Black Soil ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Risk Level ◽  
Ecological Value ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Farming Area

Ecological land with considerable ecological value can be regarded as an important indicator in guaranteeing ecosystem function and sustainable development. Generally, the urbanization process has been considered to be the primary factor affecting ecological land use. However, the influence of agricultural development, particularly in a typical farming area, has rarely been studied. In this paper, we present a method to assess the ecological risk of ecological land (ELER) in a black soil area in northeastern China. Furthermore, the underlying factors were detected using the geographically weighted regression model, which took into account conditions of natural elements, the urbanization process, and grain production conditions. The results indicate that ecological land experienced remarkable changes with an evident loss and decline from 1996–2015. The ELER progressively increased in the concentrated farming area and the western agro-pastoral ecotone, and the ecological land in the eastern forest area was always at a high risk level. According to the regression coefficients, the relationships between influence factors and ELER could be better explained by the variables of elevation, slope, proportion of rural residential area, and ratio of cultivated land area to residential area. To summarize, agricultural occupation and urban expansion were verified as the two main causes of ecological land loss, as well as elevated risks. In light of the current situation, measures such as policy adjustment and ecological restoration should be taken to avoid risk and optimize land use.

Research on Evaluation and Development Potential Analysis of Low-Slope Hilly Land Resources

2013 ◽  
Vol 444-445 ◽  
pp. 1260-1264
Author(s):  
Jie Lv ◽  
Xi Ping Yuan ◽  
Shu Gan ◽  
Ming Long Yang ◽  
Qiong He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Spatial Clustering ◽  
Land Development ◽  
Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Land Resources ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Development Potential ◽  
Potential Analysis ◽  
Ecological Benefit ◽  
Development And Utilization

Investigation and potential analysis of low-slope hilly land resources is a foundational work for carrying out land development and utilization scenically. In this paper, based on status of land use change survey data in 2011 and satellite remote sensing data of study area, at the same time,we combined with the practical situation of study area, by using superposition analysis, spatial clustering and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, did an investigation to low-slope hilly land resources which slopes between 8 degree and 25 degree, analyzed theoretical potential and actual potential of low-slope hilly development and utilization, in order to provide the basis and reference for land use work. The results of the project show: (1) development potential of low-slope hilly land resources is large; (2) the discrepancy beteen theoretical potential and actual potential is obvious; (3) the strategic of development and utilization must be adjust measures to local conditions, pay equal attention to ecological benefit, social benefit and economic benefit and considerate landscape and ecological balance comprehensively.

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