Land use change can have a strong impact on soil carbon dynamics and carbon stocks in urban areas. Due to rapid urbanization, large areas of land have been paved, and other areas have undergone rapid land use change. Evaluation of the impact of urbanization on carbon dynamics and carbon stock (30 cm) has become an issue of urgent concern. The soil carbon dynamics, due to rapid land use change in Tianjin Binhai New Area of China, have been simulated in this paper using the RothC model.

By focusing on Guangzhou, this paper examines how different concepts of city in terms of urban-rural relationships are shaped in transforming China since 1949, and explores how they influence the way in which urban planning are practiced. In the pre-reform era, the city was defined as a productive space under the system of urban-rural segregation established for securing rapid industrialization. Urban planning was thus only concerned with the development of urban areas.

Monitoring biodiversity at the level of habitats and landscape is becoming widespread in Europe and elsewhere as countries establish international and national habitat conservation policies and monitoring systems. Earth Observation (EO) data offers a potential solution to long-term biodiversity monitoring through direct mapping of habitats or by integrating Land Cover/Use (LC/LU) maps with contextual spatial information and in situ data.

The paper presents the use of indicators in a site-specific assessment method for strategic environmental assessment in regional land use planning (here: SEA-REP). It is explained with the example of the state of environment indicator ‘LUCCA 4—Urban Areas at Risk of Flooding’, how SEA as a decision-aiding instrument can contribute to the prevention of conflicts with policy for adaptation to climate change. The method begins with the determination of impact factors for SEA.

Urban land cover is expanding rapidly worldwide. This major phenomenon is often accompanied by an expansion of a green component. Urban green can itself be considered as a most important but often ignored land cover category. With this study we investigate how IKONOS data can be used more exhaustively for the detection and more importantly the quantification of urban green, compared to state-of-the art investigations.

Climate change has the potential to influence avian population dynamics through nest-fate sensitivity to temperatures during the breeding season. Nest fate also varies across spatially heterogeneous habitat, and changing land uses may independently introduce stressors on reproductive outcome. Identifying the individual and synergistic effects of climate change and land-use change is necessary for understanding the impact of global change on native species. We studied the nest fate of 3 sympatric species breeding in urban habitat in an arid region of the western United States.

The fragmentation of construction land due to decentralised urban development, disorderly mixed land use, and large-scale transportation infrastructure poses a threat to urban integrity. There is a need to quantify the fragmentation level in a consistent way for inclusion in planning-related decisions. In the context of China's urban sprawl, this study develops a quantitative and intuitive index approach that planners can use to analyse multiple fragmentation features of construction land within urban areas.

This investigation was conducted for both constituting an urban land use planning and criticizing the appropriateness of the uses with respect to ecology by taking into consideration the ecological factors in the centre and the periphery of Çanakkale city. A method based on "Maximum Values Map Approximation Method" was used in this present study. A suggested land use map of the study area was constructed for these usage types according to the arrangements of their priorities by the experts.

In this paper, the potential of superresolution (SR) image reconstruction methods for sub-pixel land-cover mapping in dense urban areas is studied. A multiple endmember approach (MESMA) is used for unmixing both original hyperspectral CHRIS/Proba and SR enhanced CHRIS/Proba data. Validation based on high resolution orthophotos (25cm) shows that land-cover fraction maps generated from SR-enhanced CHRIS/Proba data (9m) have a lower overall fractional error compared to the land-cover fractions produced from the original CHRIS data (18m), when validating both results at the 18m resolution.

Land cover composition is a valuable indicator of the ecological performance of a city. Single-family housing areas constitute a substantial part of most cities and may as such play an important role for sustainable urban development. From aerial photos we performed detailed GIS-based mapping of land cover in three detached single-family housing areas in Denmark of different urban form but comparable housing densities (ranging from 10.0 to 11.3 houses per hectare). The findings were subjected to statistical analysis and landscape metrics.

Considering the potential of shaded coffee plantations mixed with natural vegetation for promoting biodiversity conservation, this project assessed the utility of multi-date Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite imagery for the characterization of natural vegetation versus coffee plantations in western El Salvador. For assembling a multi-temporal Landsat TM data set, we applied a regression analysis model to remove cloud cover and cloud shadows. Then, through a hybrid classification approach, a nine-class land use/land cover (LULC) map was generated.

Urbanization can alter nutrient cycling. This research evaluated how urbanization affected nutrient dynamics in the subtropics. We established 17–0.04 ha plots in five different land cover types—slash pine (Pinus elliottii) plantations (n = 3), rural natural pine forests (n = 3), rural natural oak forests (n = 4), urban pine forests (n = 3) and urban oak forests (n = 4) in the Florida panhandle, a subtropical region that has experienced rapid urbanization.