Government agencies in urbanizing areas are increasingly utilizing purchase and transfer of development rights programs to preserve farmland and protect local farm economies.This article tests the effect of development restrictions imposed by permanent easement sales on farmland sales prices, using Maryland data. We correct for selectivity bias due to the voluntary nature of these programs in e...

We hypothesized that nutrient concentrations in streamwater within different landuse areas may be influenced by near-stream groundwater. We sampled streamwater and near-stream groundwater at 8 urban and 5 non-urban locations monthly from December 2000 through December 200 1 in urbanizing Johnson Creek watershed in Portland, Oregon. We compared soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), total phosphorus...

Rapid urbanization with sizeable enhancements of urban population and built-up land in China creates challenging planning and management issues due to the complexity of both the urban development and the socioeconomic drivers of environmental change. Improved understanding of spatio-temporal characteristics of urbanization processes are increasingly important for investigating urban expansion a...

Impacts of urban land use can include increased stormwater runoff temperature (Tw) leading to receiving water quality impairment. There is therefore a need to target and mitigate sources of thermal pollution in urban areas. However, complex relationships between urban development, stormwater runoff and stream water heating processes are poorly understood. A nested-scale experimental watershed s...

Excessive unplanned urban growth leads to many vulnerabilities and impacts on urban environments to varying degrees. However, the majority of the extant literature focuses on the problems related to location and socioeconomic conditions, rather than vulnerability processes and related environmental degradation. This paper analyzes the scope of urban vulnerabilities for five rapidly urbanizing a...

China is rapidly urbanizing and will inevitably face trade-offs between promoting economic growth through further urbanization and protecting fertile farmland against accelerated urban expansion. This paper presents how this dilemma is being addressed in one of the most rapidly urbanizing regions in China, the Pearl River Delta (PRD), by means of assessing urban growth and farmland dynamic, as ...

Exploring protected area (PA) siting from a biodiversity perspective is critical in mitigating human impacts on ecosystems. This paper used the MaxEnt model to predict geographic distribution patterns of wetland species Zhengzhou and environmental factors affecting species’ habitat selection. Environmental variables were screened by correlation analysis avoid prediction results due overfitting ...

The relationship between social stratification and municipal solid waste generation remains uncertain under current rapid urbanization. Based on a multi-object spatial sampling technique, we selected 191 households in a rapidly urbanizing area of Xiamen, China. The selected communities were classified into three types: work-unit, transitional, and commercial communities in the context of housin...

India has been urbanizing rapidly in recent decades. It is estimated that the urban population will nearly double to reach 534 million by 2026.