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Impacts of urban sprawl on landscapes
Published in Ciro Gardi, Urban Expansion, Land Cover and Soil Ecosystem Services, 2017
Landscape fragmentation is a major cause of the decline of many wildlife populations. It creates smaller habitat patches that support fewer species, and contain smaller and more vulnerable populations with a reduced genetic variability (Forman and Alexander, 1998; IUCN, 2001). It increases the edge effect that negatively affects the persistence of native species (Dobson et al., 2006; Matthew et al., 2015). It contributes to the destruction of established ecological connections between areas of the landscape (Jaeger et al., 2005) and reduces the ability of plant and animal species to move across landscapes. Roads and traffic reduce their access to the different types of habitat they need during their life cycle (e.g. foraging and breeding habitats), enhance mortality due to collisions with vehicles and generate disturbance and dispersal events. Several examples of the detrimental effect of landscape fragmentation, combined with intensive agricultural practices, exist (e.g. the continuous decline of the brown hare (Lepus europaeus) populations in Switzerland (EEA, 2011)).
Landscape diversity
Published in Stephen R. Gliessman, V. Ernesto Méndez, Victor M. Izzo, Eric W. Engles, Andrew Gerlicz, Agroecology, 2023
Stephen R. Gliessman, V. Ernesto Méndez, Victor M. Izzo, Eric W. Engles, Andrew Gerlicz
Edges that are ecotonal in nature, even if they are relatively narrow, can play important roles in an agricultural landscape. Since the environmental conditions existing within the edge are transitional between the farm habitat and the natural habitat, species from both can occur there together, along with other species that actually prefer the intermediate conditions. Very often the variety and density of life is greatest in the habitat of the edge or ecotone, a phenomenon that has been called the edge effect. Edge effect is influenced by the amount of edge available, with length, width, and degree of contrast between adjoining habitats all being determining factors.
Methodological framework for quantitative assessment of urban development projects considering flood risks and city responses
Published in Urban Water Journal, 2022
Bruna Peres Battemarco, Aline Pires Veról, Marcelo Gomes Miguez
The Landscape Shape Index (LSI) relates the extension of the real landscape edge to with the edge of a regular form (circle or square) of the same area and with no inner edge (McGarigal and Marks 1994). The shape and edge of natural landscapes are directly related to the ecological process of edge effects (Zeng and Wu 2005). Therefore, regular landscape patches have a higher interior-edge relationship, facilitating ecological processes capable of maintaining the species diversity in habitat, being more stable, and resistant to negative impacts (Gyenizse et al. 2014).