1. Suitability of the local habitat (‘habitat filtering’) and dispersal between stream reaches determines the composition of insect communities, and urban land use may affect both processes. While urban streams are often poor habitats for insects and dispersal between them is often hindered, conservation and restoration activities generally focus solely on the local (in-stream) environment. 2. ...

With current new urban developments, no balance can be found between green spaces and open areas present within urban networks and natural land patterns since urban networks are dominating ecological networks. Accordingly, one of the major tasks of urban and regional planners is the optimal land use allocation to urban green spaces. Therefore, to achieve this goal in this research, locations of...

The arrival of new-generation, high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery (e.g., Ikonos) has opened up new opportunities for detailed mapping and analysis of urban land use. Drawing on the traditional approach used in aerial photointerpretation, this study investigates an “object-oriented” method to classify a large urban area into detailed land-use categories. Spatial metrics and texture measur...

Change in urban construction land use is an important factor when studying urban expansion. Many scholars have combined cellular automata (CA) with data mining algorithms to perform relevant simulation studies. However, the parameters for rule extraction are difficult to determine and the rules are simplex, and together, these factors tend to introduce excessive fitting problems and low modelin...

High spatial resolution images have been increasingly used for urban land use/cover classification, but the high spectral variation within the same land cover, the spectral confusion among different land covers, and the shadow problem often lead to poor classification performance based on the traditional per-pixel spectral-based classification methods. This paper explores approaches to improve ...

abstract rapid urbanization and concentration of population in urban areas is one of the main characteristics of today’s world. in developing countries lack of necessary infrastructures, disproportionate growth, insufficient planning skills and mismanagement have caused great disparities in the distribution of urban land uses. this brings insecurity among inhabitants and inhibits sustainable de...

Concern among state legislators about rural development and rural land use is not new. In many states, agriculture remains an important feature of the economic, cultural, and political landscape. As rural incomes, populations, and prosperity have declined, states have adopted a variety of policies in response. Rural land and development policies in most states, however, are often more symbolic ...

Over the past years, the agent-based modeling approach has emerged as a promising geospatial technique for urban change simulation. In this paper, we review the status of agent-based models for urban land change research, with the emphasis on the issues of how far agent-based models have been implemented to model the real world complexity. For such a purpose, we have identified four features of...

Title of Document: A BALANCING ACT? —AN EMPRICIAL EXAMINATION OF WHETHER THE DYNAMIC BALANCE POLICY HAS HELPED CHINA RECUDE CULTIVATED LAND LOSS AMID RAPID URBAN LAND EXPANSION Juan Feng Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Directed By: Professor Erik Lichtenberg Agricultural and Resource Economics Associate Professor Chengri Ding Urban Studies and Planning For decades, the Chinese government has been con...