Urban Growth Impact Metrics

The index of ecological impact (ecoImpact) represents the magnitude of loss in ecological integrity under a specified landscape change scenario (see Integrity document for details). Here, we provide ecoImpact for several scenarios examined in the SPRAWL and INTEGRITY papers (see earlier references), as well as a new mean SPRAWL ecoImpact. 

This document provides a description of the ecoImpact metric that applies to all of the applications listed below:
      

  1. Mean ecoImpact for 2080 SPRAWL runs [updated 9/21/2022] — As SPRAWL urban growth runs are stochastic, it’s difficult to use ecoImpact runs based on SPRAWL for planning purposes. Here, we ran ecoImpact on 10 future landscapes with projected urban development for 2080 from the SPRAWL model (but without climate or sea level rise), and then took the mean.  The result gives an estimate of the ecological impact (decline in IEI) expected due to urban growth to 2080.
    DSL_documentation_ecoImpact.pdf
    DSL_ecoimpact_mean_sprawl.zip

  2. Vulnerabilty represents the effect of urban growth on connectivity and is posted on the Landscape conservation design page.

  3. SPRAWL land [updated 10/4/2022] – this is projected future landcover for 2040 and 2080 under the baseline SPRAWL scenario for a single.
    DSL_documentation_urban_growth.pdf
    DSL_data_sprawl_land.zip (pending)

  4. ecoImpact associated with the SPRAWL paper [updated 5/1/2018] — includes two landscape change scenarios: 1) baseline 70-year (2010-2080) climate change and urban growth scenario without additional land protection, and 2) same 70-year landscape change scenario but with additional terrestrial reserve areas (core areas) protected from development as established for Nature’s Network landscape design.
    DSL_documentation_ecoImpact.pdf
         DSL_data_sprawl_ecoImpact.zip

  5. ecoImpact associated with the INTEGRITY paper [updated 5/1/2018] — includes five landscape change scenarios: 1) baseline 70-year (2010-2080) climate change and urban growth scenario without additional land protection; 2) same as #1 but with 25% more demand for new development; 3) same as #1 but with increased sprawl to the pattern of development; 4) same as #1 but with both 25% more demand for new development and increased sprawl; and 5) same as #1 but with additional terrestrial reserve areas (core areas) protected from development as established for Nature’s Network landscape design (naturesnetwork.org).
    DSL_documentation_ecoImpact.pdf
         DSL_data_integrity_ecoImpact.zip