scholarly journals Urban-rural gradients of ecosystem services and the linkages with socioeconomics

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yin Hou ◽  
Felix Müller ◽  
Bo Li ◽  
Franziska Kroll

The principle of urban-rural gradients can reveal the spatial variations of ecosystem services and socioeconomic dimensions. The interrelations between ecosystem services and socioeconomics have scarcely been considered in the context of urban-rural areas. We investigated the spatial gradients and the mutual linkages of several ecosystem services and socioeconomic variables in the urban-rural areas of Leipzig, Germany, and Kunming, China. The results showed some regularities in the spatial patterns of ecosystem services and socioeconomic dimensions in both study areas. Habitat quality and f-evapotranspiration of Leipzig and habitat quality of Kunming demonstrated apparent increasing trends along all gradient patterns. However, the other ecosystem services presented divergent spatial variabilities in different gradient patterns. Road density, urban fabric and population density showed identical declining trends in both case study areas. Differently, household size, housing area as well as unemployment rate in Leipzig presented inconsistent spatial dynamics with considerable fluctuations. With regard to the gradient interrelations, road density, urban fabric and population density were strongly correlated with most ecosystem services in both case study areas. In contrast, the gradients of household size, housing area and unemployment rate of Leipzig showed inconsistent correlations with the ecosystem services gradients. Our study provides evidence to the argument that typical patterns of ecosystem service gradients do not exist in different urban-rural areas.

2013 ◽  
pp. 1901-1912
Author(s):  
Lilik B. Prasetyo ◽  
Chandra Irawadi Wijaya ◽  
Yudi Setiawan

Java is very densely populated since it is inhabited by more than 60% of the total population of Indonesia. Based on data from the Ministry of Forestry, forest loss between 2000-2005 in Java was about 800,000 hectares. Regardless of the debate on whether the different methodologies of forest inventory applied in 2005 have resulted in an underestimation of the figure of forest loss or not, the decrease of forest cover in Java is obvious and needs immediate response. Spatial modeling of the deforestation will assist the policy makers in understanding this process and in taking it into consideration, when decisions are made on the issue. Moreover, the results can be used as data input to solve environmental problems resulting from deforestation. The authors of this chapter modeled the deforestation in Java by using logistic regression. Percentage of deforested area was considered as the response variable, whilst biophysical and socioeconomic factors, that explain the current spatial pattern in deforestation, were assigned as explanatory variables. Furthermore, the authors predicted the future deforestation process, and then, for the case of Java, it was validated with the actual deforestation derived from MODIS satellite imageries from 2000 to 2008. Results of the study showed that the impacts of population density, road density, and slope are significant. Population density and road density have negative impacts on deforestation, while slope has positive impact. Deforestation on Java Island tends to occur in remote areas with limited access, low density population and relatively steep slopes. Implication of the model is that the government should pay more attention to remote rural areas and develop good access to accelerate and create alternative non agricultural jobs in order to reduce pressure on the forest.


Author(s):  
Aleksandar Videnovic ◽  
Milos Arandjelovic

The architecture of public buildings in rural areas, through the advancement of skills, knowledge, technologies, and materials, has become increasingly representative in recent decades, especially considering tourism as a global theme. The work is related to the planning of visitor centers in rural areas and the main task is defined by the effort to improve the quality of life in such areas, that is, highlight the major advantages in space, such as the natural environment. The aim of the research is defined by establishing certain elements in the planning of the visitor centers within the idea of promoting local values and cultural heritage. The first part of the chapter has been defined as an analysis of the theoretical views. The second part of the study has been defined as an analysis of the visitor centers. Through a case study, in the third part of the chapter, the work presents a comparative overview of the process to achieve two individual similar investments in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.


Author(s):  
Lilik B. Prasetyo ◽  
Chandra Irawadi Wijaya ◽  
Yudi Setiawan

Java is very densely populated since it is inhabited by more than 60% of the total population of Indonesia. Based on data from the Ministry of Forestry, forest loss between 2000-2005 in Java was about 800,000 hectares. Regardless of the debate on whether the different methodologies of forest inventory applied in 2005 have resulted in an underestimation of the figure of forest loss or not, the decrease of forest cover in Java is obvious and needs immediate response. Spatial modeling of the deforestation will assist the policy makers in understanding this process and in taking it into consideration, when decisions are made on the issue. Moreover, the results can be used as data input to solve environmental problems resulting from deforestation. The authors of this chapter modeled the deforestation in Java by using logistic regression. Percentage of deforested area was considered as the response variable, whilst biophysical and socioeconomic factors, that explain the current spatial pattern in deforestation, were assigned as explanatory variables. Furthermore, the authors predicted the future deforestation process, and then, for the case of Java, it was validated with the actual deforestation derived from MODIS satellite imageries from 2000 to 2008. Results of the study showed that the impacts of population density, road density, and slope are significant. Population density and road density have negative impacts on deforestation, while slope has positive impact. Deforestation on Java Island tends to occur in remote areas with limited access, low density population and relatively steep slopes. Implication of the model is that the government should pay more attention to remote rural areas and develop good access to accelerate and create alternative non agricultural jobs in order to reduce pressure on the forest.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 328-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Fei ◽  
Zhang Shuwen ◽  
Yang Jiuchun ◽  
Bu Kun ◽  
Wang Qing ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 4374
Author(s):  
Zhuo Wu ◽  
Rubo Zhou ◽  
Ziyao Zeng

Rapid urbanization has degraded some important ecosystem services and threatens socioeconomic sustainability. Although many studies have focused on the effect of urbanization on ecosystem services, the effect and its threshold have not been well-identified spatially. In this study, we propose a research framework by integrating nighttime light data, the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Environmental Service and Tradeoffs) model, and a spatial response index to characterize the response of ecosystem services to rapid urbanization. We considered Foshan City as a case study to explore the effect of rapid urbanization on ecosystem services during 2000–2018. Our results showed that rapid urbanization resulted in a 49.13% reduction in agricultural production and a 10.13% reduction in habitat quality. The spatial response index of agricultural production, habitat quality, soil retention, water yield, and carbon sequestration were 14.25%, 2.94%, 0.04%, 0.78%, and 0.07%, respectively. We found that developing urban areas had the highest spatial response index, indicating that this area was the crucial area for future land management. We consider that our research framework can help identify the key areas affected by rapid urbanization. Visualizing the spatial response index and extracting the threshold for different levels of urbanization will be conducive to sustainable urban management and planning.


1977 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Dilip Pendse ◽  
M. C. Conner

In recent years, many communities have used regional planning in their quest for economic and social development. Several factors have prompted them to do so. First, community leaders have recognized that a larger geographic area gives a community a larger economic base for planning purposes and offers access to services and institutions that would be impossible in each and every town, thus enhancing potential for development. Second, a greater emphasis is now placed upon identification and use of regions for planning and development purposes under state and federal laws. Third, importance of regional planning has grown because of such factors as growing urbanization, increased demands for community services, pressure to reduce disparities among urban-rural areas, growing environmental concerns, and “spillover” effects of unplanned growth.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 259-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Sali ◽  
Stefano Corsi ◽  
Federica Monaco ◽  
Chiara Mazzocchi ◽  
Matjaž Glavan ◽  
...  

Metropolitan areas are characterized by the coexistence of a urban core insisting on natural resources of surrounding rural areas, strictly linked to the former. Inevitably, increasing urbanization and its consequences affect the model of urban development, which then needs to deal with the challenge of sustainability, also aiming to reduce pressures on resources and on supplying capacities of rural agricultural systems in providing food to urban zones, traditionally lacking. It then becomes important to deepen the possibility for the dense core to be supplied through proximity agriculture, able to recreate and improve synergic connections between urban and rural spheres. The paper aims to study the relationships among them for feeding the metropolis, adopting a methodology for the spatial definition of urban centre in metropolitan area and the assessment of its food balance, in order to identify the potentialities of local and proximity agriculture and provide a first evaluation for the possibility to match urban development and production potential. Identified tools are applied to Ljubljana metropolitan area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Joseph Bailey

<p>Economic and technological shifts over the last half of the 20th century have seen widespread changes in the way the New Zealand rail network operates, and are continuing to lead to the eminent decline of sections within the network as priorities shift to ensure its long-term survival as a whole. The decline in rail operations to the present point has already seen railway stations, goods yards and associated industrial areas in many rural areas and some smaller centers falling into disuse, and it is inevitable that many more will follow. The aim of this research is to identify and analyze these rail facilities, both redundant and operational, within provincial New Zealand cities with the intention of establishing possible strategies for re-integrating these sites back within the surrounding urban fabric of their respective cities, while retaining links to the cultural and industrial heritage of the sites in terms of the role they played in the birth and development of provincial New Zealand. A review of relevant literature has been conducted in unison with a graphic analysis of both current and redundant rail sites in ten provincial New Zealand cities. The former railway goods yard in Oamaru was selected for the design case study as it encompasses the common issues identified throughout the graphic analysis, while also presenting a number of unique issues. In response to the initial aim of this research, the design case study for Oamaru concludes that, once redundant, these former rail facilities can be successfully re-integrated with their surrounding urban fabric, without comprimising the unique inherent cultural and industrial heritage of the site.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleri Kent ◽  
Amy L W Schwartz ◽  
Sarah E Perkins

Abstract Wildlife-vehicle collisions are a major cause of mortality in animal populations and can cause significant population-level effects. Urban areas are typically associated with higher road densities and unique wildlife communities in comparison to rural areas, and therefore have the potential to be associated with high numbers of collisions, and roadkill risk. Here, we use a citizen science database of wildlife roadkill and species distribution models to assess how roadkill risk (probability of roadkill observation per km2) varied along an urban–rural gradient for British wildlife. Roadkill risk was positively associated with road density, until around 5000 m/km2, a value representing villages or the outskirts of towns and cities. Beyond 5000 m/km2, risk remained high for some species (hedgehog, fox, pigeons and gulls) but reduced for other species (badger, rabbit, pheasant). Roadkill risk was a function of live species distribution for badger, hedgehog and rabbit, with significant overlap between spatial patterns of roadkill risk and the species’ live distribution. This was not the case for fox, pheasant, pigeons and gulls. Fox roadkill risk was underrepresented in rural areas, possibly due to low road density, while pheasant risk was overrepresented. For pigeons and gulls—well-known urban exploiters—roadkill risk was overrepresented in urban areas given their live distributions, possibly due to risks associated with foraging, particularly roadkill scavenging by gulls. Our results highlight the dangers of the UK’s dense road networks to wildlife, even to species considered adapted to urban environments and human disturbance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (37) ◽  
pp. 125-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Šimon

AbstractA key issue in socio-economic geography is to understand how regional and social polarisation shapes the territorial organisation of society. We argue that effects of polarisation are not translated simply and straightforwardly in a whole region, but vary to a large extent with respect to different types of accessibility areas. We applied the time-accessibility framework to classify a territory into urban, peri-urban, rural, and remote rural areas at a national and regional scale. Subsequently, we computed comparative indicators for this territorial classification, measuring three dimensions of peripherality for a period of thirty years. The analysis illustrates how polarisation and peripheralisation works at a detailed spatial level. A case study of the Ústí region shows re-polarisation and bi-polarisation of the region in its path from socialist urbanisation in the 1980s to regional peripheralisation in 2011. The use of the time-accessibility framework allows to assess regional changes within long-term and broader changes of core-periphery relations at national level and thus allows for a better understanding of the different nature of socialist and post-socialist peripheries. Finally, the article offers methodical procedures and tools allowing for a comparable research of polarisation and peripheralisation. Thus, it is responding to the call for more comparative research of peripheral areas in Europe.


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