Global projections of future urban land expansion under shared socioeconomic pathways.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31988288.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-14386-x and PMC identifier 6985221.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Despite its small land coverage, urban land and its expansion have exhibited profound impacts on global environments. Here, we present the scenario projections of global urban land expansion under the framework of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). Our projections feature a fine spatial resolution of 1 km to preserve spatial details. The projections reveal that although global urban land continues to expand rapidly before the 2040s, China and many other Asian countries are expected to encounter substantial pressure from urban population decline after the 2050s. Approximately 50-63% of the newly expanded urban land is expected to occur on current croplands. Global crop production will decline by approximately 1-4%, corresponding to the annual food needs for a certain crop of 122-1389 million people. These findings stress the importance of governing urban land development as a key measure to mitigate its negative impacts on food production.