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Multi-scale mismatches between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation create windows of opportunity for conservation development

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Abstract

Context

Urban sprawl and the expanding transportation infrastructure drive land consumption and landscape fragmentation, causing environmental deterioration and loss of species. Current understanding of how these drivers interact to shape landscape fragmentation is still poor. However, a strong correlation between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation patterns is commonly assumed.

Objectives

Our main objective was to test the strength, non-stationarity, and scale-dependency of the relationship between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation patterns (‘sprawl-fragmentation relationship’). Subsequently, we propose an extended framework for the links between urban sprawl, expansion of transport infrastructure, and landscape fragmentation.

Methods

We quantified spatial patterns of urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation for mainland Spain at multiple scales. We then fitted global regression models and geographically weighted regression models with metrics of landscape fragmentation and urban sprawl.

Results

Most variation in landscape fragmentation values (almost 80 % on average) is not explained by urban sprawl metrics through global modeling. Local models show substantial improvements in model performance, with an average of 37 % of the variance remaining unexplained. The contribution of urban sprawl to landscape fragmentation patterns varies locally and depends on scale, with higher contributions at coarser scales and at higher organizational levels.

Conclusions

Our investigation revealed three critical characteristics of the sprawl-fragmentation relationship: it does not prevail, is non-stationary, and scale-dependent. We propose four mechanisms that may have resulted in this mismatch: scale, time-lagged development, spatial arrangement of development, and other external variables including teleconnections. These spatial mismatches provide windows of opportunity for conservation through better development strategies.

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Abbreviations

m eff :

Effective mesh size

s eff :

Effective mesh density

DIS :

Degree of urban dispersion

PUA :

Proportion of urban area

UP :

Urban permeation

UPU:

Urban permeation units

HP :

Horizon of perception

OLS:

Ordinary least squares

GWR:

Geographically weighted Regression

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Acknowledgments

The Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation provided funds for this research (Project CGL2008-02567). AT’s work was funded through a FPU PhD grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. We thank the Servicio de Ocupación del Suelo, from the National Center for Geographic Information (CNIG, Spain), for providing assistance with the SIOSE database. We also thank Liba Pejchar for her valuable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (MNCN-CSIC), José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain

    Aurora Torres & Juan C. Alonso

  2. Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University Montréal, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Suite H1255, Montréal, QC, H3G 1M8, Canada

    Jochen A. G. Jaeger

Authors
  1. Aurora Torres
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  2. Jochen A. G. Jaeger
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  3. Juan C. Alonso
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Correspondence to Aurora Torres.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Fig. S1. Study area and reporting units. Supplementary material 1 (TIFF 2122 kb)

10980_2016_400_MOESM2_ESM.tif

Fig. S2 to S14. Mapped local r2 values, slopes, and residuals from PUA-, DIS-, UP-models, and multivariate models. Supplementary material 2 (TIFF 21810 kb)

10980_2016_400_MOESM3_ESM.tif

Fig. S15 to S17. Parameter estimates ordered by spatial extent of the reporting units. Supplementary material 3 (TIFF 1093 kb)

10980_2016_400_MOESM4_ESM.docx

Table S1. Description of the urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation geometries (land cover types). Supplementary material 4 (DOCX 20 kb)

Table S2. Description of the landscape fragmentation geometry (linear elements). Supplementary material 5 (DOCX 11 kb)

Table S3. Summary results for all OLS and GWR models. Supplementary material 6 (DOCX 66 kb)

10980_2016_400_MOESM7_ESM.docx

Table S4. Parameter estimates from the univariate OLS and GWR models. Table S5. Parameter estimates from the multivariate OLS and GWR models. Supplementary material 7 (DOCX 55 kb)

Table S6. Correlation analysis between urban sprawl metrics across scales. Supplementary material 8 (DOCX 27 kb)

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Torres, A., Jaeger, J.A.G. & Alonso, J.C. Multi-scale mismatches between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation create windows of opportunity for conservation development. Landscape Ecol 31, 2291–2305 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-016-0400-z

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