Land 2017, 6(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/land6020028
Agricultural Land Fragmentation at Urban Fringes: An Application of Urban-To-Rural Gradient Analysis in Adelaide
School of the Environment, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia
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Academic Editors: Harini Nagendra and Monika Kopecka
Received: 23 January 2017 / Revised: 10 April 2017 / Accepted: 11 April 2017 / Published: 16 April 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Land Systems: An Ecosystems Perspective)
Abstract
One of the major consequences of expansive urban growth is the degradation and loss of productive agricultural land and agroecosystem functions. Four landscape metrics—Percentage of Land (PLAND), Mean Parcel Size (MPS), Parcel Density (PD), and Modified Simpson’s Diversity Index (MSDI)—were calculated for 1 km × 1 km cells along three 50 km-long transects that extend out from the Adelaide CBD, in order to analyze variations in landscape structures. Each transect has different land uses beyond the built-up area, and they differ in topography, soils, and rates of urban expansion. Our new findings are that zones of agricultural land fragmentation can be identified by the relationships between MPS and PD, that these occur in areas where PD ranges from 7 and 35, and that these occur regardless of distance along the transect, land use, topography, soils, or rates of urban growth. This suggests a geometry of fragmentation that may be consistent, and indicates that quantification of both land use and land-use change in zones of fragmentation is potentially important in planning. View Full-TextKeywords:
urban-to-rural gradients; agricultural land-use; land fragmentation; urban fringe; Mean Parcel Size; Parcel Density
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Wadduwage, S.; Millington, A.; Crossman, N.D.; Sandhu, H. Agricultural Land Fragmentation at Urban Fringes: An Application of Urban-To-Rural Gradient Analysis in Adelaide. Land 2017, 6, 28.
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