Abstract
Prairies or grasslands together with areas designated as agricultural lands are one of the largest types of land cover and land use that exist today. While prairies provide habitat to a wide variety of animals and organisms, and agricultural lands support human populations, these lands, especially those in the immediate vicinities of large urban areas, are giving way to urbanization at alarming rates. In particular, prairies are often viewed as wastelands because their benefit to the effective functioning of the urban ecosystem is often not fully understood. On the other hand, many agricultural lands are being converted for several urban uses because of the high economic returns from their sale. In this study, we classified SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre) satellite data of the study area using the supervised maximum likelihood classification approach in order to investigate the loss of prairies and agricultural lands due to urban expansion in six sub-watersheds in the Kansas City metropolitan area of the States of Kansas and Missouri in the U.S. Based on the classified maps, we computed the magnitude and rate of urban expansion, and the proportion of loss in prairies and agricultural lands that was a result of urban expansion. Results from the 22-year study revealed that in all six sub-watersheds, agricultural lands and grassland were depleted at alarming rates with no sustainable effort to conserve them. These results provide baseline information that can support a data-driven and sustainable path for urban expansion in the examined sub-watersheds.
Highlights
Urban expansion is not new, neither is its effect on various ecosystems and land cover types
Our study showed that agricultural land/grassland decreased in the East Fork Little Blue River by 20%, with 92.02% of this loss being due to urban expansion
The maps produced from this classification process were used to investigate the loss of prairies and agricultural lands to urban expansion in six sub-watersheds in the Kansas City metropolitan area of the States of Kansas and Missouri in the U.S Based on the classified maps, we calculated the magnitude and rate of urban expansion, and the proportion of loss in prairies and agricultural lands that was a result of urban expansion
Summary
Urban expansion is not new, neither is its effect on various ecosystems and land cover types. The conversion of farmlands near cities for other human uses is a global trend that challenges our long-term capacity to provide food, fiber, and ecosystem services to a growing world population [7], increasingly living in major cities around the world [2]. It is estimated that the population living in urban areas has increased from 30% in the 1950s to 54% in 2014 [8], with a projected increase to over 65% by 2050 [9] This growth will continue to put pressure on the urban ecosystem, including grass and agricultural lands. There is even less concern among the general population about essential ecosystem services that are provided by farmland and natural areas, such as providing clean water, reducing soil erosion, mitigating the impact of severe weather, preserving biodiversity, and maintaining open land for recreation [10], which support the effective functioning of the urban ecosystem. In the long term, these attractive benefits will present a challenge to future food production and ecosystem services that should support urban life
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