Detailed urban land-cover maps are essential information for sustainable planning. Land-cover maps assist planners in designing strategies for the optimisation of urban ecosystem services and climate change adaptation. In this study, the statistical software R was applied to land cover analysis for the Catania metropolitan area in Sicily, Italy. Six land cover classes were extracted from high-resolution orthophotos. Five different classification algorithms were compared. Texture and contextual layers were tested in different combinations as ancillary data.

Despite the potential to provide new insight into the underlying heterogeneity of urban thermal landscapes, local indicators of spatial autocorrelation (LISA) remains underutilized in land surface temperature (LST) related study. The present research applies local Moran's I as a unique approach to recognize the pattern of statistically significant LST increase by detecting clusters of localized hot spots. The single channel algorithm has been applied to extract LST from nine temporal Landsat datasets ranging from 2001 to 2013.

A combined approach of remote sensing (RS) and geographical information systems (GIS) was used in this study to identify the impact on urban surface radiant temperature (SRT) of urban green-space change. Urban SRT increases as green-space area is converted into non-green-space area. Also, well preserved green space and newly connected green space contribute to a decrease of the SRT. Seoul Metropolitan area is rapidly expanding. Existing urban SRT studies have, however, mainly been conducted for Seoul City.

Conservation efforts often require site or parcel selection strategies that lead to spatially cohesive reserves. Although habitat contiguity is thought to be conducive to the persistence of many sensitive species, availability of funding and suitable land may restrict the extent to which this spatial attribute can be pursued in land management or conservation. Using optimization modeling, we explore the economic and spatial tradeoffs of retaining or restoring grassland habitat in contiguous patches of various sizes near the Chicago metropolitan area.

During the territorial reform of Latvia separate parishes and towns will be merged into larger areas. Therefore it is necessary to consider economical and spatial conditions, which develops historically, in context of new space quality regulations in the European Union countries.

Cities are characterized by dynamic interactions between socio-economic and biophysical forces. Currently more than half of the global population reside in cities which influence the global biogeochemical cycles and climate change, substantially exacerbating pressures on urban pollution, water quality and food security, as well as operating costs for infrastructure development. Goods and services such as aesthetic values, water purification, nutrient recycling, and biological diversity, that urban ecosystems generate for the society, are critical to sustain.

Population growth, urbanisation and climate change represent significant pressures on urban water resources, requiring water managers to consider a wider array of management options that account for economic, social and environmental factors.

In many cities worldwide, urbanization is leading to the rapid and extensive fragmentation of native vegetation into small and scattered urban remnants. We investigated the effects of fragmentation on plant species richness and abundance in 30 remnant Banksia woodlands in the rapidly expanding city of Perth, located in the southwestern Australian global biodiversity hotspot.

Landscapes in urban areas especially in developing countries are under pressure due to increasing population of urban dwellers and un-directed spread of city boundaries. Sound urban environment plays important aesthetic, ecological, cultural, social and engineering roles beneficial to the people. To support better management of vegetated sites, it is necessary to understand the spatial configuration at the landscape scale and changes that have occurred.

Studies of urbanization effects in Chinese cities from the aspect of the coupled development of economy and environment are rare due to data limitations. This paper studied Shanghai’s fast urban expansion and examined the dynamic relationship between economic growth and environment consequences at the district level. We extracted data on urban built-up area and land surface temperature from remote sensing images. We analyzed the patterns of urban expansion and land use change and explained the dynamic relationship between economic development and environment conditions.

Based on the same data source of Landsat TM/ETM+ in 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, all urban built-up areas in China are mapped mainly by human interpretation. Mapping results were checked and refined by the same analyst with the same set of criteria. The results show during the last 20 years urban areas in China have increased exponentially more than 2 times. The greatest area of urbanization changed from Northeastern provinces in 1990s to the Southeast coast of China in Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, and Zhejiang in 2010s. Urban areas are mostly converted from croplands in China.

Ecosystem services (ESs) are gaining ground in urban policy as a key to attaining sustainable cities. However, strategic and land-use planners need operational and accessible tools to better understand the consequences of policy and planning measures. Based on a study of the City of Stockholm and its surrounding region, we argue that spatially explicit land-use mapping is a good base for modeling and visualizing the supply of urban ESs provided by different patterns of Service Providing Units.