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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2011
- Title: Urbanization & Land Use Change Dynamics
- Author: Stephan L Bradley (Lincoln University of Missouri)
- Abstract:
Around the world, the mass migration by humans from rural to urban areas (Urbanization) has contributed to social and environmental changes visible throughout many cities. This phenomenon has brought about serious concern, leading scientist across the globe on a quest for knowledge of social and environmental responses to the land use changes rapidly occurring. This study investigates temporal fluctuations, vegetative growth responses, and human behaviors resulting from land use change, through the analysis of environmental indicators. Environmental indicators including temperature, weather, geospatial data, and vegetation were compared across a rural to urban gradient. In addition, human observations were conducted to develop an understanding of the inner mechanics of urban ecosystems under different land management practices. From this research, we believed we would find significant differences in weather, vegetative trends, and human use of “greened” vs. “non greened” urban space. Preliminary results show significant differences in vegetative abundance and growth trends as well as human use of the urban sites studied. Some findings include a 50% greater abundance in vegetation in the urban roof‐top plots compared to the rural roof‐top plots. Additionally, there was 60% Oak survival at the urban site while there was 100% Oak mortality at the rural site in our urban to rural roof‐top Oak study. Thermal readings indicated that the six non green urban sites produced lower temperatures in our six paired urban green to non green study. However, our ground readings contradicted these findings, showing all non green urban sites higher in temperature. This study raises questions for further investigation while providing a strong foundation of knowledge into the ever expanding urban environment.
- Research Category: Regional Studies
