Impacts of urban expansion on natural habitats in global drylands

Ren, Qiang; He, Chunyang; Huang, Qingxu; Shi, Peijun; Zhang, Da; Güneralp, Burak

doi:10.1038/s41893-022-00930-8

Cited by 104 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 53 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It is also an important region for global sustainable development. The urban expansion and resource utilization of drylands have a greater impact on the natural ecosystem, and the indirect impact of urban expansion is even much greater than the direct impact (Zeng et al, 2021;Ren et al, 2022). Therefore, in the future, it is necessary to further effectively couple ecosystem assessment with socio-economic development characteristics and sustainable development goals, and build more operable decision-making tools for dryland ecosystem protection and management (Fu et al, 2021).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Research Directionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divergent trends of ecosystem status and services in the Hexi Corridor

Zhu

Zhai

Gao

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In terms of ecosystem structure, quality, and service, we have constructed a total of 18 characteristic evaluation indicators that could reflect the “state change interaction” of the ecosystem and analyzed the Spatio-temporal change of the ecosystem in Hexi Corridor from 2000 to 2020. The results show that: 1. The improvement of ecosystem and service is more obvious in the areas with a better ecological background in the East. The supply and regulation services of the ecosystem are synergetic. 2. In the past 2 decades, the ecological conditions of the Hexi corridor have improved as a whole, and the hot spots for improving ecosystem quality and services have gradually moved eastward. 3. Ecosystem changes have significantly changed the quantity and relationship of ecosystem services, showing strong spatial heterogeneity. For example, the loss of natural vegetation in the central and eastern regions with good ecological backgrounds has improved the water conservation service and also enhanced the synergy between it and the supply service. From the perspective of the relationship between ecosystem regulation services and supply services, the coordination characteristics are weakened, but the performance of regions with a poor ecological background in the west is just the opposite. In short, the typical climate characteristics of dry land with little rain and the spatial pattern of water resource shortage not only jointly determine the ecosystem background of the region, but also bring significant spatial differences and greater uncertainties to the relationship between ecosystem transformation and ecosystem services. Therefore, dryland ecosystem management and protection should be based on detailed and differentiated ecosystem assessment, taking into account regional natural resource endowment, giving priority to improving the stability of the regional ecosystem and gradually increasing regional ecosystem services.

show abstract

Section: Limitations and Future Research Directionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divergent trends of ecosystem status and services in the Hexi Corridor

Zhu

Zhai

Gao

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Urban areas are expanding at twice the rate of population growth globally, most often at the expense of natural areas (Seto et al 2012;Ren et al 2022). Uunderstanding to what extent plant and animal species can persist in the urban environment is therefore a major challenge in conservation (Guénard et al 2015;Magura et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasted avian communities between two protected areas in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Exantus

Cambrone²,

Bezault

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although urban and suburban protected areas may contribute to conserving biodiversity, their importance remains poorly documented. We compared the composition of bird assemblages between two protected areas, the Urban National Park of Martissant (UNPM) and the suburban Wynne Farm Ecological Reserve (WFER) in Haiti, one the poorest country in the world, plagued with severe deforestation and environmental degradation. Species were identified along transects without distance estimation. A total of 718 birds belonging to 38 different species were censused (494 at UNPM and 224 at WFER, from 24 and 26 species, respectively), including two endemic and vulnerable species, Corvus leucognaphalus and Amazona ventralis, observed only at the urban site. Species richness, diversity, evenness and species-abundance distributions did not differ significantly between sites. However, the composition of the two avian assemblages differed significantly, with only 31.6% species in common and a significant difference in their relative abundance. We found no evidence for a difference in the degree of forest dependency between the two assemblages. However, mainly and strict insectivorous species accounted for a larger proportion of observations at WFER (34.8%) compared to UNPM (19.6%). Factors influencing the contrast in avian assemblage composition between two sites include differences in elevation and associated vegetation, difference in water availability and variation in the ability of species to adapt to the urban environment. Our results demonstrate the importance and complementarity of the two protected areas for the conservation of avian diversity in Haiti.

show abstract

“…As a consequence, government policies regulating the occupation of cropland by urban expansion have been limiting urbanization 5,6 . In addition, the impact of urban expansion on natural lands has resulted in concerns on biodiversity conservation [7][8][9] , and the intermediate loss of natural lands due to the cropland displacement is greater than the direct loss of natural land occupied by urban expansion 3 . Between 1992 and 2015, urban expansion globally caused a direct loss of natural lands of around 7.9 million hectares (Mha), while cropland displacement caused indirect losses of between 24.8 and 49.8 Mha 3 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global urbanization benefits food security and nature restoration

Wang

Deng

Reis

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Urbanization has been considered as an antagonist to food security and nature restoration due to land-taking by urban expansion. However, if urbanization was undertaken with a focus on integrated urban–rural development, it could in face release land areas globally. Here show that domestic rural-to-urban migration with urbanization can support a global population with 2 billion more people, while requiring 49 million hectares of less built-up lands due to higher population density in urban relative to rural areas, over the period from 2020 to 2050. If no urbanization would occur, currently predicted growth trends in global population would require an additional 46 million hectares of lands. If cross-countries rural-to-urban migration is supported, land release could be increased up to 67 million hectares. This amount could satisfy 51% of global cropland demand in 2050, and as an additional benefit, reduce cropland fragmentation. If the land areas released were set aside for nature restoration, 4,488 more species could be protected. As a further co-benefit, additional carbon sequestration of 15 billion tonnes could be achieved over the period from 2020 to 2050. Policies to promote cross-countries rural-to-urban migration and management of released lands would help to benefits food security and natural restoration.

show abstract

Impacts of urban expansion on natural habitats in global drylands

Cited by 104 publications

References 53 publications

Divergent trends of ecosystem status and services in the Hexi Corridor

Divergent trends of ecosystem status and services in the Hexi Corridor

Contrasted avian communities between two protected areas in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Global urbanization benefits food security and nature restoration

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About