Dear Colleagues,

Humanity has crossed the line from being a rural to urban species since 2007. For the first time in history, more people live in cities and urban areas than in the countryside. Starting in the developed nations, where the urbanization process has been significantly decelerated in the meantime, urbanization has especially increased in Asia and South America as well as in Africa to a substantial extent in the second half of the last century. Especially in developing and emerging countries, the hydrological and hydrogeological setting of each region has deteriorated through growing urbanization processes. Urban areas show, in contrast to the rural areas, a rapid interaction between surface water and groundwater as well as between drinking water and sewage system. Urbanization and the attended changes in the settlement and land use structure will eventually lead to negative consequences for the environment as well as for the water resources. In this context, one of the key tasks of sustainable and long-term land and natural resources management is to optimize water resource utilization referring to the spatial distribution of people and their activities.

Klaus Baier, Ph.D.
Guest Editor

• Urban land use
• Land use change
• Analyse methods of land use change
• Modelling of land use change
• Urbanization
• Urban planning
• Megacities
• Water resource management
• Urban recharge
• Water quality/quantity in urban areas
• Modelling of urbanization effect on water resources
• Water basin management
• Health effects
• Vulnerability
• Water treatment / decentralized systems
• Water Landscape
• Environmental awareness
• Socio-cognitive aspects in water management