Urban Landscapes in Transition, Lessons From Integrating Biodiversity and Habitat Modelling in Planning

Mörtberg, Ulla; Zetterberg, Andreas; Balfors, Berit

doi:10.1142/s1464333212500020

Cited by 14 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Urban green infrastructure has gained much interest as a planning tool for sustainable urban development, e.g., [6,7], and needs to address the scale, governance level and goals of the city, e.g., [8]. The City of Stockholm forms the center of this urban region, and locally adapted green infrastructure plays an important role in its planning process [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Urban Green Infrastructure Changes and Impact on Habitat Connectivity Using High-Resolution Satellite Data

2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent decades, the City of Stockholm, Sweden, has grown substantially and is now the largest city in Scandinavia. Recent urban growth is placing pressure on green areas within and around the city. In order to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, green infrastructure is part of Stockholm municipal planning. This research quantifies land-cover change in the City of Stockholm between 2003 and 2018 and examines what impact urban growth has had on its green infrastructure. Two 2018 WorldView-2 images and three 2003 QuickBird-2 images were used to produce classifications of 11 land-cover types using object-based image analysis and a support vector machine algorithm with spectral, geometric and texture features. The classification accuracies reached over 90% and the results were used in calculations and comparisons to determine the impact of urban growth in Stockholm between 2003 and 2018, including the generation of land-cover change statistics in relation to administrative boundaries and green infrastructure. For components of the green infrastructure, i.e., habitat networks for selected sensitive species, habitat network analysis for the European crested tit (Lophophanes cristatus) and common toad (Bufo bufo) was performed. Between 2003 and 2018, urban areas increased by approximately 4% while green areas decreased by 2% in comparison with their 2003 areal amounts. The most significant urban growth occurred through expansion of the transport network, paved surfaces and construction areas which increased by 12%, mainly at the expense of grassland and coniferous forest. Examination of urban growth within the green infrastructure indicated that most land area was lost in dispersal zones (28 ha) while the highest percent change was within habitat for species of conservation concern (14%). The habitat network analysis revealed that overall connectivity decreased slightly through patch fragmentation and areal loss mainly caused by road expansion on the outskirts of the city. The habitat network analysis also revealed which habitat areas are well-connected and which are most vulnerable. These results can assist policymakers and planners in their efforts to ensure sustainable urban development including sustaining biodiversity in the City of Stockholm.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%