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The last urban frontier: Assessing drivers of urbanization and tradeoffs among social and ecosystem services associated with LCLUC in Africa
Project Start Date
01/01/2021
Project End Date
12/31/2024
Grant Number
20-LCLUC2020-006
Solicitation

Team Members:

Person Name Person role on project Affiliation
Jody C. Vogeler Principal Investigator Colorado State University  , Fort Collins , USA
Melissa R. McHale Co-Investigator Colorado State University  , Fort Collins , USA
Melinda J. Laituri Co-Investigator Colorado State University  , Fort Collins , USA
Noeleen Murray Collaborator University of Pretoria, Hatfield , South Africa
Orion Ritzert-Cardenas Graduate Student Researcher Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA
Shahriar Shah Heydari Postdoc Researcher Colorado State University, Fort Collins , USA
Abstract
Urbanization continues to be one of the leading drivers of Land Cover Use Change (LCLUC) globally, although African countries appear to be at the forefront of these current urban expansion trends. In fact, predictions indicate that there will be more people living in cities in Africa in the next 30 years, than there are people living in cities right now around the world; with this increase in population growth it is also expected that we will see a 12-fold increase in urban land area. These predictions indicate that a majority of LCLUC globally will be transforming both natural and managed landscapes to residential neighborhoods, informal settlements, and intensely modified cityscapes.  To date, the study of urbanization and its consequences and impacts has occurred at two very different scales and resolutions: (1) Large scale (regional, national, or global), lower resolution (≥30m pixels) urbanization patterns, and; (2) small scale (city, neighborhood, parcel), high resolution (
Project Research Area