The increase in population and the expansion of built-up areas into natural and agricultural areas results in more than just loss of open spaces surrounding cities. Reduced accessibility to nature, visual intrusion of buildings into natural viewsheds, and changes in runoff requires us to assess these impacts on open spaces. Our aim in this paper was to examine and demonstrate how topography can be incorporated into modeling and analyzing environmental impacts of cities.

Fire is a key component of many land use systems and a determinant of land change. There is a growing concern that climate change will cause more catastrophic fires, but in many areas the impacts will be mediated by human land use practices. In African savannas, for example, fires are frequent and research finds low inter-annual variability in burned areas in places with highly variable rainfall. This regularity of fire suggests that African regimes are humanized, meaning that they are governed by human practices more than climate variation.

Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, has expanded rapidly over the past decade. Insufficient authority is in place to address this expansion, and many residential plots have been developed in the peripheral regions of the city. The aim of this study is to estimate changes in land cover within the central part of Ulaanbaatar, which has been affected by anthropogenic disturbances.