Urban Expansion, Land Cover and Soil Ecosystem Services

About this book

More than half of the world population now lives in cities, and urban expansion continues as rural people move to cities. This results in the loss of land for other purposes, particularly soil for agriculture and drainage. Urban Expansion, Land Cover and Soil Ecosystem Services presents a review of current knowledge of the extension and projected expansion of urban areas at a global scale.

Focusing on the impact of the process of 'land take' on soil resources and the ecosystem services that they provide, it describes approaches and methodologies for detecting and measuring urban areas, based mainly on remote sensing, together with a review of models and projected data on urban expansion. The most innovative aspect includes an analysis of the drivers and especially the impacts of soil sealing and land take on ecosystem services, including agriculture and food security, biodiversity, hydrology, climate and landscape.

Case studies of cities from Europe, China and Latin America are included. The aim is not only to present and analyse this important environmental challenge, but also to propose and discuss solutions for the limitation, mitigation and compensation of this process.

Contents

Foreword
      Fernanda Guerrieri

Part 1: Introducing and Understanding the Process
1. Is Urban Expansion a Problem?
      Ciro Gardi
2. Measuring and Monitoring the Extent of the Built Environment: Methodologies and Data Available
      Michele Munafò and Luca Congedo
3. Measuring and Monitoring the Extent of the Built Environment: From the Local to the Global Scale
      Daniele Ehrlich, Aneta J. Florczyk, Andreea Julea, Thomas Kemper, Martino Pesaresi and Vasileios Syrris
4. Modelling and Projecting Urban Land Cover
      Carlo Lavalle, Filipe Batista e Silva, Claudia Baranzelli, Chris Jacobs-Crisioni, Ana Luisa Barbosa, Jean-Philippe Aurambout, Ricardo Barranco, Mert Kompil, Ine Vandecasteele and Carolina Perpiña Castillo
5. Drivers of Urban Expansion
      Stefan Fina

Part 2: Impact of Land Take and Soil Sealing on Soil-related Ecosystem Services
6. Urban Expansion and Impacts on Ecosystem Services: An Overview
      Mitchell Pavo-Zuckermann and Richard Pouyat
7. Impact of Land Take on Global Food Security
      Ciro Gardi
8. Hydrological Impact of Soil Sealing and Urban Land Take
      Alberto Pistocchi
9. Impact of Land Take on Biodiversity
      Geertrui Louwagie, Mirko Gregor, Manuel Löhnertz, Ece Aksoy, Christoph Schröder and Erika Orlitova
10. Impact of Land Take and Soil Sealing on Carbon Storage
      Klaus Lorenz and Rattan Lal
11. Urban Sprawl, Soil Sealing and Impacts on Local Climate
      Luigi Perini, Andrea Colantoni, Gianluca Renzi and Luca Salvati
12. Impacts of Urban Sprawl on Landscape
      Marie Cugny-Seguin

Part 3: Case Studies
13. Italy
      Michele Munafò and Luca Congedo
14. Urban Land Expansion and its Impacts on Cultivated Land in the Pearl River Delta, China
      Xiaoqing Song and Zhifeng Wu
15. Urbanization in Mexico as Cases for Latin America
      René R. Colditz, María Isabel Cruz López, Adrian Guillermo Aguilar Martínez, José Manuel Dávila Rosas. and, Rainer A. Ressl
16. Dar es Salam
      Michele Munafò and Luca Congedo

Part 4: Policy and Good Practices
17. Limitation, Mitigation and Compensation
      Stefano Salata and Gundula Prokop
18. Policy, Strategy and Technical Solutions for Land Take Limitations
      Stefano Salata
19. Soil Sealing and Land Take as Global Soil Threat: The Policy Perspective
      Luca Montanarella
20. Conclusions
      Ciro Gardi

Customer Reviews

Biography

Ciro Gardi works in the Animal and Plant Health Unit of the European Food Safety Authority, Parma, Italy. Previously, he was a Senior Scientist at the Land Resource Management Unit of the Joint Research Center of the European Commission and Professor of Soil Science at the University of Parma. He has served as an independent expert and consultant for the European Commission, World Bank, OECD and several NGOs and is currently a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, representing it in the Global Soil Partnership (FAO).