Sustainable development under population pressure: lessons from developed land consumption in the conterminous U.S.

ABSTRACT: Population growth will result in a significant anthropogenic environmental change worldwide through increases in developed land (DL) consumption. DL consumption is an important environmental and socioeconomic process affecting humans and ecosystems. Attention has been given to DL modeling inside highly populated cities. However, modeling DL consumption should expand to non-metropolitan areas where arguably the environmental consequences are more significant. Here, we study all counties within the conterminous U.S. and based on satellite-derived product (National Land Cover Dataset 2001) we calculate the associated DL for each county. By using county population data from the 2000 census we present a comparative study on DL consumption and we propose a model linking population with expected

SUBMITTER: Grekousis G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4373912 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature