Worldwide demographic changes have resulted in shifts from predominantly rural lifestyles to ones with a much stronger emphasis on urban living. Today there are more than 400 cities with populations exceeding 1 million persons, which is in stark contrast to the early 20th century when there were less than 20 such cities. The physical growth of cities, which involves the conversion of land covers to urban uses, represents one of the most significant alterations that humankind has made to the surface of the earth. These transformations from natural environments to features that support different forms of human activity include agriculture, residential, commercial, industrial, and infrastructure such as roads and other types of transportation. Each of these land transformations has impacted, to varying degrees, the local climatology, hydrology, geology, and biota that predate human settlement. It is essential that we document and monitor, to the best of our ability, the nature of land transformations and the consequences to the natural environment. The applicants (Wentz and Myint) and the cooperating international partners (Jrgens and Netzband) have extensive experience and mutual interests in documenting and understanding the drivers and consequences of urbanization. All have been involved in the Urban Environmental Monitoring (UEM) project, a baseline project at Arizona State University (ASU) to collect and analyze remotely sensed data for 100 urban areas worldwide. Our overarching goal has been, and continues to be, to develop remote sensing technology to better understand the consequences of rapid urbanization through advanced biophysical measurements, classification methods, and modelling, which can then be used to inform public policy and planning. Within this proposal we seek to initiate a new phase of enhancement and intensification of existing cooperation ties not only among the two universities but within the growing worldwide network of senior scientists, junior scholars, PhD students, and city officials. The funding directly develops international linkages between international scientists and local practitioners aiming to make cities liveable. In this document, we describe the project history, including the funding record and the scientific contributions from the investigators. Second, we identify our plans to expand the project in both scope and scientific contribution. Finally we identify our needs and our qualifications for carrying out the proposed project through an international workshop.
|Effective start/end date||9/1/10 → 8/31/12|
- National Science Foundation (NSF): $45,000.00