Abstract
Expanding urbanization in highly fragile desert environments requires a thorough understanding of the current state and trends of land uses to achieve an optimal balance between development and the integrity of vital ecosystems. The objectives of this study are to quantify land use change over the 25-year period 1990–2015 and analyze temporal and spatial urbanization trends in the Middle Rio Grande Basin. We conclude by indicating how the results can inform on-going water resource research and public policy discussion in an arid region. Results show that the predominant upland mixed vegetation land cover category has been steadily declining, giving up land to urban and agricultural development. Urban development across the region of interest increased from just under three percent in 1990 to more than 11 percent in 2015, mainly around the major urban areas of El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, and Las Cruces. Public policy aspects related to results from this study include transfer of water rights from agriculture to land developers in cities, higher risk of flooding, loss of natural ecosystems, and increased water pollution from point and non-point sources. Various stakeholders can find the study useful for a better understanding of historical spatial and temporal aspects of urban development and environmental change in arid regions. Such insights can help municipal authorities, farmers, and other stakeholders to strike a balance between development needs and protecting vital ecosystems that support the much needed development, especially in regions that are endowed with transboundary natural resources that often are incompletely represented in single nation data.
Highlights
Concerns on the impact of rapid urbanization on natural resources are increasing with growing population in many parts of the world [1,2,3,4]
Key questions include: (1) what is the extent, and how fast is urbanization and other land use changes happening in the Middle Rio Grande Basin region? (2) where is the land for urbanization coming from?, and (3) what are the impacts of urbanization on agricultural and other land uses in the region? The objectives of this study are: (1) to quantify land use change over the 25-year time period and analyze temporal and spatial urbanization trends, including other broadly defined land use categories (Table 1) and (2) to present how the results can inform on-going water resource research and public policy discussion in an arid region
On the U.S side of the border, we use the cumulative number of building permits for single-family and multifamily residential units compiled from U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data for the City of El Paso as a proxy for urban development
Summary
Concerns on the impact of rapid urbanization on natural resources are increasing with growing population in many parts of the world [1,2,3,4]. One of the most important pressures on resources is competition between user sectors that include agriculture, industry, domestic and public water supply, wildlife habitats, and recreation [6,7]. Three economically important urban centers, El Paso, Texas, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico are home to a combined population of more than 2.4 million people [10], and the appetite for more land to accommodate both outward expansion and intense redevelopment is still high [11]. Urban expansion involves increased water use through land use/land cover change—the use of water in urban landscaping and gardening—as well as growing populations consuming residential, commercial, and industrial supplies. Recent studies [12,13,14] remind us that knowledge of the extent and rate of urbanization is of immense interest to growing urban settlements and watersheds for a wide range of purposes that include urban planning, water and land resource management, marketing analysis, tourism, and forestry analysis, among others
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