Land sparing is crucial for urban ecosystem services

Stott, Iain, Soga, Masashi, Inger, Richard and Gaston, Kevin J (2015) Land sparing is crucial for urban ecosystem services. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 13 (7). pp. 387-393. ISSN 1540-9295

Full content URL: http://doi.org/10.1890/140286

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Item Type:Article
Item Status:Live Archive

Abstract

The world's cities must grow to accommodate an increasing urban population, and achieving this with minimal impact on ecosystem structures and functions is a major challenge. At opposite ends of a possible development spectrum are “land sharing” – extensive sprawling urbanization where built land and natural space are interspersed – and “land sparing” – intensive and extremely compact urbanization alongside separate, large, contiguous green space. Using case studies across urbanization gradients, we demonstrate that land sparing is crucial for sustaining a majority of ecosystem services. Conversely, some land sharing may also be necessary to ensure that people benefit from urban green space. Future urban development should carefully consider green space provision, to maximize the services provided by urban ecosystems. This can be achieved by optimizing distributions of development intensity across cities by means of top‐down, policy‐led approaches.

Keywords:urban ecology, macroeceology, ecosystem services, land sparing sharing, biodiversity
Subjects:C Biological Sciences > C181 Biodiversity
C Biological Sciences > C180 Ecology
Divisions:College of Science > School of Life Sciences
ID Code:36169
Deposited On:08 Oct 2019 09:52

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