Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
25
Ecological modeling in urban
environments: predicting changes
in biodiversity in response to future
urban development
Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman
Human population growth is increasingly transforming the landscape into urbanized land uses as more than 50%
of humans worldwide now live in urban areas. The intensification of land use caused by urbanization threatens the
long-term provisioning of ecosystem services. Urban remote sensing provides the opportunity to develop data to
support ecological modeling specifically through the high resolution mapping of land cover over space and time.
Integrated modeling of land cover, land use, and ecological systems is required to predict possible changes in future
ecological conditions. I present an example of urban ecological modeling where I combine the output from a land use
change model with output from a land cover change model to predict avian species richness 25 years into the future.
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