Across the globe, urban areas are rapidly expanding, and now the majority of the world’s population lives in cities. Peri-urbanization, a specific form of urbanization characterized by rapid and fragmented growth, is also increasing rapidly, especially in developing countries. By 2030, it is anticipated that peri-urban areas in East Asia will expand by 200 million people, or 40% of total projected urban population growth, making these areas one of the largest and most significant land cover changes in the region.

Cereal production has increased substantially in the last few decades in South Asia, primarily attributable to intensification rather than expansion of agricultural land area. Intensification has occurred through high-yielding seed varieties, irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide inputs. Moreover, intensification has largely been achieved through multiple cropping, i.e. increasing the number of crops per year from the same field. However, agricultural production is highly variable on an interannual basis and dependent on climate.

Rice is a major staple food for almost 50% of the human population in the world. Paddy rice fields, where rice plants are cultivated in flooded/inundated soils, are widely distributed across the globe, ranging from single paddy rice crop in a year (single cropping system) in temperate zone to triple paddy rice rice crops in a year in the moist tropic regions (triple cropping system).

This webinar presentation discussed remote sensing analyses carried out within the NASA grant on “Forest, agricultural, and urban transitions in Mainland Southeast Asia: Synthesizing knowledge and developing theory”. This research fulfils part of the grant objectives by mapping the expansion of tree crops for seven selected Landsat footprints in montane mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA) (see Figure 1). Specifically we sought to map different tree crops (e.g. rubber, eucalyptus, and cashews); ascertain the date/period of change; and identify the land cover that preceded the change.

Urbanization, a major driver of global change, profoundly impacts our physical and social world, for example, altering carbon cycling and climate. Understanding these consequences for better scientific insights and effective decision-making unarguably requires accurate information on urban extent and its spatial distributions. With support from NASA Land Cover and Land Use Change (LCLUC) Program, this webinar presented the research methods and findings from the project, Understanding and Simulating Global Urban Expansion in the Context of Climate Change.

In the decade of the 2000s, urbanization occurred at an astounding rate, especially in Asia, with the extensive development of numerous mega cities. Understanding of urban change becomes more imperative not only as the world becomes more urban than rural, but also as more urban dwellers live in conditions adversely impacted by the mega urbanization that can be observed and monitored with satellite remote sensing across administrative boundaries. Amongst the mega cities of the world, Beijing has undergone transformative changes with an extreme urbanization rate.

The specific objective of this project is to understand the role that improved transportation routes especially new roads and connectivity have on both urban and rural land-cover/land-use. The recent webinar presented some of the preliminary results of this project and looked at changes that have taken place within the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) in Vietnam.

The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population and 30% of the world’s automobiles, emitting 45% of global transportation CO2 emissions (DeCicco et al. 2006). In 2012, automobile emissions were 28% of total US fossil fuel CO2 emissions and accounted for almost half of the growth in total US emissions since 1990 (US EPA 2014). Despite being a substantial component of US emissions, on-road CO2 remains poorly quantified at sub-state and urban scales (Gately et al. 2013).

This interdisciplinary project examines how urban infrastructure and vegetation (land cover) is distributed in and around sub-tropical desert cities and how this affects both the local and regional climate. Five regions were chosen-Las Vegas, USA; Beer Sheva, Israel; Jodhpur, India; Kharga, Egypt; Hotan/Hetian, China-to allow for a comprehensive analysis.

Urban land covers alter the rhythms of regional climate on many time scales. Urban areas locally alter climate through changing the brightness and the dryness of urban surfaces, reducing wind speeds within cities, and increasing the concentration of air pollutants over cities. These changes interact to increase temperatures within and over cities relative to nearby rural areas in a phenomenon known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect.