Changes in Urban Agricultural Landscape Affect Community Food Security: A GIS-based Analysis

Abstract

Community food security, which is a relatively new concept, has become a global concern amidst momentous impacts of climate change in severalcommunities across the globe. Urban areas in the Philippines, like Calamba Cityin Laguna province, are not exempted from the impacts of climate change. Urbanagriculture landscapes play important roles in establishing community foodsecurity. The study analyzed an urban agricultural landscape in the Philippinesthrough the use of patch analyst extension in a geographic information system(GIS). The study employed the geospatial and temporal image processing andanalysis research method to compare two sets of land use-land cover (LULC)maps, i.e. 2003 and 2010 from NAMRIA. Two landscape metrics were used in the comparison: mean patch size (MPS) and mean shape index (MSI). The landscape consists of two agricultural patches (i.e. annual cropland and perennialcropland) with MPS and MSI values (i.e. MPS = 1,088.15 vs. 274.55 has; MSI= 3.87 vs. 1.94) that significantly changed from 2003 to 2010. Such change maylead to a food production system that is more dependent on external supplies. Externally supported food production system can threaten the local community’sfood security in the long term.Keywords: Landscape ecology, community food security, geographic information system,mean patch size, mean shape index, urban agricultural landscape, descriptivedesign, Philippines