Santa Fe Institute

Seminar

November 16, 2012
12:15 PM
Collins Conference Room

Nikhil Kaza (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Abstract.  The hallmark of development in the United States has been sprawling and leapfrog urbanization.  This study provides a comprehensive overview of the changing urban landscape patterns in the last couple of decades.  While landscape metrics have traditionally been used to describe ecological fragmentation, via urbanization and land use change, they have not been used to describe the urbanization patterns themselves.  I present a work in progress that uses urban landscape metrics to capture the urban fragmentation at the edges, infill coalescence, and land cover change in the United States.  I will describe these processes at multiple scales (nation, watershed, urban areas) and argue that the patterns of urbanization is different in different parts of the country.  Furthermore, the traditional drivers of change (roads, schools, existing development etc.), exhibit a nonlinear relationships that point to rethinking the way traditional land cover change models have modeled urbanization.

Purpose: Research Collaboration

SFI Host: Luis Bettencourt

More Info

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