Abstract
ContextExpansion of urban settlements has caused observed declines in ecosystem services (ES) globally, further stressing the need for informed urban development and policies. Incorporating ES concepts into the decision making process has been shown to support resilient and functional ecosystems. Coupling land change and ES models allows for insights into the impacts and anticipated trade-offs of specific policy decisions. The spatial configuration of urbanization likely influences the delivery and production of ES.ObjectiveWhen considering multiple ES simultaneously, improving the production of one ecosystem service often results in the decrease in the provision of other ES, giving rise to trade-offs. We examine the impact of three urban growth scenarios on several ES to determine the degree to which spatial configuration of urbanization and the development of natural land cover impacts these services over 25 years.MethodsWe couple land change and ES models to examine impacts to carbon sequestration, surface water-run off, nitrogen and phosphorus export, organic farming and camping site suitability, to determine trade-offs among the six ES associated with each spatial configuration for western North Carolina.ResultsConsequences of urban configurations are dramatic, with degraded ES across all scenarios and substantial variation depending on urban pattern, revealing trade-offs. Counter-intuitive trade-offs between carbon sequestration and lands available for organic farming and camping were observed, suggesting that no configurations result in mutual benefits for all ES.ConclusionsBy understanding trade-offs associated with urban configurations, decision makers can identify ES critical to an area and promote configurations that enhance those.
Highlights
Increasing world population has resulted in the conversion of natural landscapes to urban land use, globally altering the relationship between humans and the natural environment
To investigate scenarios of urban growth strategies, we simulated land change for 19 counties in the Western North Carolina region from 1995 to 2030 using the FUTure Urban-Regional Environmental Simulation (FUTURES) model (Meentemeyer et al 2013), its open source model developed by Petrasova et al (2016)
The total amount of land converted to urban in each of the three scenarios was approximately the same, under the infill scenario we observed a tight clustering of new urban patches placed near existing urban areas and the opposite for the sprawl scenario
Summary
Increasing world population has resulted in the conversion of natural landscapes to urban land use, globally altering the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Alternative growth strategies, sometimes referred to as ‘‘green growth’’ or ‘‘sustainable growth’’, have emerged as possible solutions to sprawl Green growth strategies, such as infilling new development near existing urban areas, can potentially reduce service costs (Carruthers and Ulfarsson 2003) and emissions from vehicles (US Environmental Protection Agency 2001), protect ecological systems and may conserve forests and farmlands by reducing disjunct development (Meentemeyer et al 2013). It is unclear how alternative spatial configurations of urban development that shape mosaics of land cover around urban areas will impact the delivery of environmental goods (Eigenbrod et al 2011; Nedkov and Burkhard 2012). With global populations projected to increase, it is critical to understand the relationship between expanding urban configuration and ES in different geographic context to identify specific trade-offs
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