The Kalu Ganga Basin in Sri Lanka is generally flooded once a year. A network of low-lying lands acts as natural retention and storage that captures floodwater, minimizing damage. An increase in the flood frequency has been observed in recent years. It is commonly perceived that this increase is caused by a rise in the frequency and severity of ‘very wet’ precipitation events. We conclude that land-use changes may have played a larger role in generating floods.

Urbanization is a major threat on biodiversity due to the direct destruction of natural and semi-natural habitats and to the indirect impacts caused by urban areas beyond their limits. In this study, we proposed a methodological framework to assess the potential impacts of current and future urbanization on high diversity sites and their associated species across the entire French Mediterranean region. Using a 100 m grid cell, we adapted a land-use change (LUC) model to project future urbanization over a 20 years period.

By increased rural-urban migration in many African countries, the assessment of changes in catchment hydrologic responses due to urbanization is critical for water resource planning and management. This paper assesses hydrological impacts of urbanization on two medium-sized Zimbabwean catchments (Mukuvisi and Marimba) for which changes in land cover by urbanization were determined through Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images for the years 1986, 1994 and 2008. Impact assessments were done through hydrological modeling by a topographically driven rainfall-runoff model (TOPMODEL).

This paper presents and analyses land use changes in the periurban areas of Meknes, Morocco, focusing on disappearing fertile and productive farmland. Although identified by the Moroccan public policies, the concern for periurban farmland protection is not the government's first priority. It remains behind economic development and housing of low-incomes. In Meknes, where land tenure remains very complex, urban growth is impacting high-quality-soil farmland while the land market is characterised by increasing farmland values and weak public policy regulation.

According to the viewpoints of predecessors, we define the signification of development right of agricultural land and connotation of the price of development right of agricultural land as follows, the development right of agricultural land is to change the former use nature of agricultural land, so as to become the right of construction Use land; the price of development right of agricultural land refers to the price that is difference between the price of construction use land, and summation of the price of former agricultural land.

Urban sprawl influences extends on large perimeters in which natural and agricultural spaces have a social value. Private market, in particular land market, does not allow their safeguarding. A public land use regulation must be implemented. It cannot be a zoning: it concerns the whole of ordinary spaces. We show that it is possible to use the spatial economy and landscape ecology tools, to draw a prospective for ecologizing the town planning

Rapid economic and population growth exert profound effects on land use/cover change, especially in rapid economically developing areas, such as Guangdong Province-a pioneer of economic growth and urbanization in China.

This document provides an overview on land use and spatial development in the Montpelier region and turning points the planning and governance regime. In the first part we give an overview on the land use and regional development of the case study region. In the second part, we introduce the planning system, its major actors and instruments as well as governance aspects to the reader.

Starting from the status of citizenization of land-losing farmers, problems in the citizenization are analyzed, such as the difficulty in land-losing farmers’ economic life after turning into citizens, employment difficulties of land-losing farmers after living in the city, and the prominent problems in social security of land-losing farmers. Causations for the citizenization problems of land-losing farmers are analyzed. Firstly, institutionalized rejection is the root of the obstacle in citizenization of land-losing farmers.

Urbanization is a major threat on biodiversity due to the direct destruction of natural and semi-natural habitats and to the indirect impacts caused by urban areas beyond their limits. In this study, we proposed a methodological framework to assess the potential impacts of current and future urbanization on high diversity sites and their associated species across the entire French Mediterranean region. Using a 100 m grid cell, we adapted a land-use change (LUC) model to project future urbanization over a 20 years period.

For the last 15 years, the agglomeration of Riga has expanded and one of the most important problems that Riga faces is movement of middle-class people to surrounding municipalities. This tendency is mostly referable to the processes in the USA during the second half of the 20th century. This research has first identified the history and causes of urban sprawl since the earliest times and has compared it with the situation in Riga Region.

L’ampleur du phénomène d’artificialisation des terres agricoles dans les pays méditerranéensoblige à s’interroger sur les modes de régulation publique susceptibles de protéger plus efficacement cesterres contre l'étalement urbain et résidentiel. C’est avec cet objectif et dans la perspective d’apporter desconnaissances utiles aux décideurs publics qu’un réseau méditerranéen (FONCIMED) d'échanges et decomparaisons d'expériences sur la question foncière s’est constitué en 2007.