Characterizing biodiversity in urban areas using remote sensing - Urban Remote Sensing: Monitoring, Synthesis and Modeling in the Urban Environment - page 277

World Cities Terrestrial Biomes
Tundra, glaciers and rock
Boreal forest
Temperate forest and grassland
Montane grassland and shrub
Mediterranean forest and scrub
Desert and xeric shrub
Tropical forest and grassland
Mangrove and flooded grassland
Lakes

N

W E

S

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

Size A

500

Size B

0

Size C

FIGURE 20.1 Map showing the world's cities and main biomes (a) based on an interpretation of data from Olson et al .
(2001). The diagram (b) shows the size of periurban area within each biome for cities of different size, where A has > 1 million
inhabitants, B has 0.1-1 million inhabitants and C has < 0.1 million inhabitants assuming that for larger cities the periurban
area reaches up to 100 km, for smaller down to 10 km. This assumption is a rough estimate of the influence of the urban
metabolism, based on the ideas of, for example Coelho and Roth (2006) on integrating the urban metabolism in urban
ecology. As can be seen, temperate forest and grasslands are most affected by periurban areas, followed by tropical forest
and grasslands. Basic geographical data from ESRI (2008).