Urbanization is the process in which green space (fields, trees, wetlands, etc.) is converted into black space (concrete and asphalt). Urbanization occurs because people move from rural areas to urban areas. This usually occurs when a country is still developing. Slums and its consequences of overcrowding lack of sanitation, global warming, air pollution, water pollution and loss of forest cove...

Foresight Studies analyze emerging issues and trends with the objective of quantifying the research challenge and the potential impact for agricultural research. The past century has entailed a relatively speaking rapid redistribution as well as growth of urban populations, with the urban population surpassing the rural one for the first time in 2008. Processes of urban growth and their implica...

Climate alteration is one of the most cited ecological consequences of urbanization. However, the magnitude of this impact is likely to vary with spatial scale. We investigated how this alteration affects the biological fitness of insects, which are especially sensitive to ambient conditions and well-suited organisms to study urbanization-related changes in phenotypic traits. We monitored tempe...

The world is rapidly urbanizing, but there is no single urbanization process. Rather, urban areas in different regions of the world are undergoing myriad types of transformation processes. The purpose of this paper is to examine how well data from DMSP/OLS nighttime lights (NTL) can identify different types of urbanization processes. Although data from DMSP/OLS NTL are increasingly used for the...

Changes in biodiversity owing to vegetation degradation resulting from widespread urbanization demands serious attention. However, the connection between vegetation degradation and urbanization appears to be complex and nonlinear, and deserves a series of long-term observations. On the basis of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the image’s digital number (DN) in nighttime st...

In this paper, an Urban Light Index (ULI) is constructed to facilitate analysis and quantitative evaluation of the process of urbanization and expansion rate by using DMSP/OLS Nighttime Light Data during the years from 1992 to 2010. A unit circle urbanization evaluation model is established to perform a comprehensive analysis of the urbanization process of 34 prefecture-level cities in Northeas...

The study investigates the role of agriculture in the process of urbanization. According to Matsuyama (1992), the relationship between agricultural productivity and urbanization depends on the economic openness. In closed economies the relation is positive while for open economies it is negative. This paper empirically tests the role of agricultural productivity on a country’s level of urbaniza...

Sustainable urbanization policies and strategies are posited as a major tool by which to achieve the sustainable development of growing towns and cities. A major challenge for sustainable urbanization policies and strategies is how to address the complexity of urbanization, especially the ongoing growth of informal settlements and slums in developing countries. It is acknowledged that those liv...

Since reforms carried out in the late 1970s, China has experienced unprecedented rates of urban growth. Remote sensing data and surface observational data are used to investigate the urbanization process and related environmental consequences, focusing on extreme heat events and air pollution, in Zhejiang Province (ZJP, East China). Examination of satellite-measured nighttime light data indicat...

The relationship between urbanization, economic growth, and water use change is one of the key issues for China’s sustainable development, as rapid urbanization and continuous economic growth are accompanied by a steady water stress. Thus, we applied a cointegration test and a VECM (vector error correction model) Granger causality test to investigate the causal relationship between the urbaniza...