The conversion of Earth's land surface to urban uses is one of the most irreversible human impacts on the global biosphere. It drives the loss of farmland, affects local climate, fragments habitats, and threatens biodiversity. Here we present a meta-analysis of 326 studies that have used remotely sensed images to map urban land conversion. We report a worldwide observed increase in urban land a...

Most existing spatio-temporal urban expansion models consider urban land-use as a binary process, through the identification of urban versus non-urban areas. The main aim of this study is to analyze and model the expansion of multiple urban densities in Wallonia, Belgium. To this end, this study employs a multinomial logistic regression model that enables to visualize the consequence of differe...

urban expansion and agriculture intensification are relevant drivers in land degradation (ld)processes in europe due to net loss of land, soil sealing, landscape fragmentation and other negative effects on the environment. this paper explores changes (or “trajectories” of change) in land use and cover (lulc) and their relationship with the consumption of soils in emilia-romagna (northern italy)...

tehran as the biggest metropolitan of iran is located in the areas that are at high-risk of earthquake. what increases tehran's vulnerability toward earthquake is the urban physical expansion in vaious dimensions. since the analysis of the mentioned expansion is a solution to many urban problems, the effects of tehran expansion in increasing vulnerability to earthquake has been surveyed in...

With the development of global changes, researchers from all over the world attach attention to land use changes increasingly, and large scale land use changes which have resulted from urban expansion catch people’s eyes. In this paper, urban expansion and their spatial and temporal variability of the Beijing city has been studied over a period of 21 years (1984–2005) via statistical classifica...

Urban land has increasingly expanded and encroached upon a significant number of paddy fields in Hang-Jia-Hu Plain, due to the rapid socio-economic development and agro-pedoclimatic conditions favorable to rice cultivation and human settlement. Although many studies have analyzed the characteristics of urban land expansion, relatively less attention has been paid to exploring the various urban ...

Urban expansion is the outcome of intensive human activity within a certain natural environment and may cause ecological and environmental problems, especially on small islands where land is a scarce resource. Praia is the capital city of Cape Verde, located on such an island. Understanding urban expansion will provide good knowledge for urban planning and policy making in balancing urban econo...

Many methods for modeling urban expansion are available. Most of these computational models demand a variety of large-scale environmental and socio-economic data to investigate the relationship between urban expansion and its driving forces. These requirements are not always fulfilled, particularly in developing countries due to a lack of data availability. This necessitates methods not sufferi...

studies relating form and functions of cities indicate sprawl as an intriguing research issue, especially for certain typologies of cities. although with inherent differences on a local scale, mediterranean cities offer a kaleidoscopic overview of sprawl morphologies that require dedicated monitoring tools. the present study provides an original assessment of recent urbanization processes in th...

Investigating the characteristics of urban expansion is helpful in managing the relationship between urbanization and the ecological and environmental issues related to sustainable development. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Line-scan System (DMSP/OLS) collects visible and near-infrared light from the Earth’s surface at night without moonlight. It generates effective t...