Given the regional geographic specificities of Central Andean valleys, the social and environmental impact of dispersed urbanization on smallholder farmers is particularly high in the new urban peripheries of Peruvian mountain cities.

Woodland fragments, in small historical cities, are commonly regarded as temporary voids in an urban matrix, yet to be allocated a land-use, under city planning regulations. However, they could display relevant plant diversity, and contribute to urban ecosystem services. This study combined surveys at 100 m², and at patch level, with the aim to investigate how patch size, stand and urbanization, affected the structure of plant communities in thirty woodland fragments (0.1–2 ha), spontaneously developing in the small, historical city of Padova (Northern Italy).

The present study was aimed to investigate how and to what extent urban land surface temperature (ULST) is affected by spatial pattern of green cover patch in an urban ambient in Isfahan, Iran. To materialize the effects of spatial pattern of green cover on ULST, Landsat ETM + image data on May 5, 2002 was acquired to be processed for ULST estimation and to generate Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) classes.

Non-Urbanised Areas (NUAs) are part of agricultural and green infrastructures that provide ecosystem services. Their role is fundamental for the minimization of urban pollution and adaptation to climate change. Like all natural ecosystems, NUAs are endangered by urban sprawl. The regulation of sprawl is a key issue for land-use planning. We propose a land use suitability strategy model to orient Land Uses of NUAs, based on integration of Land Cover Analysis (LCA) and Fragmentation Analysis (FA). With LCA the percentage of evapotranspiring surface is defined for each land use.

The objectives of this Colorado study were to assess primary reasons ranchers choose to stay or sell the ranch, compare the motivations for ranching between a traditional agriculturally based county and a rapidly developing county, and assess whether factors such as length of tenure, fiscal dependency on ranching, and dependency on public lands play roles in decisions to sell. Personal interviews were conducted with 37 ranchers. While land use conversion occurs for a wide variety of reasons, lack of heirs and detrimental public policy were important reasons given for selling ranches.

Urbanization alters watershed ecosystem functioning, including nutrient budgets and processes of nutrient retention. It is unknown, however, how variation in stormwater infrastructure design affects the delivery of water and materials from urban watersheds. In this study, we asked: (1) How does stormwater infrastructure design vary over time and space in an arid city (Phoenix, Arizona, USA)?, and (2) How does variation in infrastructure design affect fluxes of dissolved nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and organic carbon (DOC) from urban watershed ecosystems?

Previous studies have found that urbanization often decreases net primary production (NPP), an important integrative measure of ecosystem functioning. In arid environments, however, urbanization may boost productivity by introducing highly productive plant communities and weakening the coupling of plant growth to naturally occurring cycles of water and nutrients. We tested these ideas by comparing NPP estimated for natural and anthropogenic land covers in the Phoenix metropolitan region of USA using MODIS NDVI data and a simplified parametric NPP model.

We examined the utility of nutrient criteria derived solely from total phosphorus (TP) concentrations in streams (regression models and percentile distributions) and evaluated their ecological relevance to diatom and algal biomass responses. We used a variety of statistics to characterize ecological responses and to develop concentration-based nutrient criteria (derived from ecological effects) for streams in Connecticut, USA, where urbanization is the primary cause of watershed alteration.

Urban land development substantially alters the terrestrial carbon cycle, particularly the net primary productivity (NPP), from local to global scales. However, limited attempts have been undertaken to elucidate the differences in NPP between pre- and post-urban land development in China. In this paper, the terrestrial NPP after urbanization in China was assessed by using the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford approach (CASA), toward which a calibration was conducted for adapting this model on the fine-scale application.

The Tampa Bay estuary is a unique and valued ecosystem that currently thrives between subtropical and temperate climates along Florida’s west-central coast. The watershed is considered urbanized (42� % lands developed); however, a suite of critical coastal habitats still persists. Current management efforts are focused toward restoring the historic balance of these habitat types to a benchmark 1950s period. We have modeled the anticipated changes to a suite of habitats within the Tampa Bay estuary using the sea level affecting marshes model under various sea level rise (SLR) scenarios.