Land cover in singlefamily housing areas and how

Authors: Mette Boye Nielsen Marina Bergen Jensen

Publish Date: 2015/05/03

Volume: 18, Issue: 4, Pages: 1103-1123

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Abstract

Land cover composition is a valuable indicator of the ecological performance of a city Singlefamily housing areas constitute a substantial part of most cities and may as such play an important role for sustainable urban development From aerial photos we performed detailed GISbased mapping of land cover in three detached singlefamily housing areas in Denmark of different urban form but comparable housing densities ranging from 100 to 113 houses per hectare The findings were subjected to statistical analysis and landscape metrics Land cover varied with urban form A traditional spatial configuration with rectangular parcels contained significantly more vegetation and less impervious surfaces per parcel than newer Radburninspired configurations with more quadratic parcels Correlation analysis showed size of paved access ways to be positively correlated with distance from road to carports in all parcels and number of trees to be positively correlated with garden size in rectangular parcels Correlation analysis also showed that higher trees were located further from houses and that rectangular parcels could support more trees than quadratic parcels These results suggest that the urban form of neighbourhoods to some degree predicts the long term land cover composition We conclude that strategies for maximizing the ecological performance of singlefamily housing areas can be informed by knowledge on urban form and that digital mapping of land cover based on aerial photography is a useful tool

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