Using a process-based Dynamic Land Ecosystem Model, we assessed carbon dynamics of urbanized/developed lands in the Southern United States during 1945-2007. The results indicated that approximately 1.72 (1.69-1.77) Pg (1P = 10(15)) carbon was stored in urban/developed lands, comparable to the storage of shrubland or cropland in the region. Urbanization resulted in a release of 0.21 Pg carbon to...

Urban land has increasingly expanded and encroached upon a significant number of paddy fields in Hang-Jia-Hu Plain, due to the rapid socio-economic development and agro-pedoclimatic conditions favorable to rice cultivation and human settlement. Although many studies have analyzed the characteristics of urban land expansion, relatively less attention has been paid to exploring the various urban ...

The exodus of people from rural areas to cities brings many detrimental environmental, social and cultural consequences. Monitoring spatiotemporal change by referencing the historical timeline or incidence has become an important way to analyze urbanization. This study has attempted to attain the cross-sectional analysis of Kathmandu valley that has been plagued by rampant urbanization over the...

China’s urbanization has resulted in significant changes in agricultural land use. However, understanding of the linkages between urbanization and fertilizer use intensity is limited. Using county-level panel data for Henan Province, 1995–2008 and panel econometric models, we investigate the impact of urbanization and other socioeconomic factors on fertilizer use intensity, with a focus on the ...

Urbanization often occurs in an unplanned and uneven manner, resulting in profound changes in patterns of land cover and land use. Understanding these changes is fundamental for devising environmentally responsible approaches to economic development in the rapidly urbanizing countries of the emerging world. One indicator of urbanization is built-up land cover that can be detected and quantified...

This paper links development-induced urbanization strategies to changes in land use and associated impacts on rural communities and agro-ecosystems in a selected rural area of China. Energy, monetary and human time variables as well as information on environmental pressures, have been combined to obtain indicators that are useful to compare the metabolism of different patterns of land use from ...

We propose that the emergent phenomenon know as “desakota”, the rapid urbanization of densely populated rural populations in the newly developed world, particularly China, can be simulated using agent-based models which combine both local and global features. We argue that deskota represents a surprising and unusual form of urbanization wellmatched to processes of land development that are driv...

China has been through a period of remarkable urban sprawl since the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, with the highest urbanization occurring in the coastal zones. Sustainable urban development requires a better understanding of the spatiotemporal characteristics of urbanization. This study systematically explored urban sprawl in Chinese coastal cities with a visual interpretation method f...

We analyzed how land-use patterns and changes in urbanization influence reported rabid raccoons in Georgia from 2006 - 2010.  Using Geographical Information Systems and rabies surveillance data, multivariate analysis was conducted on 15 land-use variables that included natural topography, agricultural development, and urbanization to model positive raccoon rabies cases while controlling for pot...