Soil Quality and Peri-Urban Expansion of Cities: A Mediterranean Experience (Athens, Greece)
| Autor: | Francesca Perrone, Barbara Ermini, Giovanni Quaranta, Samaneh Sadat Nickayin, Filippo Gambella, Gianluca Egidi, Rosanna Salvia |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Mediterranean climate
Geography Planning and Development lcsh:TJ807-830 0211 other engineering and technologies lcsh:Renewable energy sources 02 engineering and technology 010501 environmental sciences Management Monitoring Policy and Law compact settlements Mediterranean 01 natural sciences Human settlement land take Environmental planning Spatial planning lcsh:Environmental sciences 0105 earth and related environmental sciences lcsh:GE1-350 Renewable Energy Sustainability and the Environment lcsh:Environmental effects of industries and plants Urban sprawl 021107 urban & regional planning Soil quality Metropolitan area indicators Geography lcsh:TD194-195 urban sprawl Sustainability Erosion |
| Zdroj: | Sustainability, Vol 13, Iss 2042, p 2042 (2021) |
| ISSN: | 2071-1050 |
| Popis: | Soil loss and peri-urban settlement expansion are key issues in urban sustainability, with multi-disciplinary implications that go beyond individual ecological and socioeconomic dimensions. Our study illustrates an assessment framework diachronically evaluating urbanization-driven soil quality loss in a Southern European metropolitan region (Athens, Greece). We tested the assumption that urban growth is a process consuming high-quality soils in a selective way analyzing two spatial layers, a map illustrating the diachronic expansion of settlements at five time points (1948, 1975, 1990, 2000, and 2018), and a geo-database reporting basic soil properties. The empirical results showed that the urban expansion in the Athens region took place by consuming higher- quality soil in fertile, mostly flat, districts. It entailed a persistent soil quality decrease over time. This trend globally accelerated in recent years, but in a heterogeneous way. Actually, newly built, more compact areas expanded on soils with lower erosion risk than in the past. Besides, low-density land take is likely to be observed in soils with moderate-high or very-high qualities. These evidences reflect the need for a comprehensive evaluation of complex processes of land take informing spatial planning for metropolitan sustainability. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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