Urbanization alters spatiotemporal patterns of ecosystem primary production: A case study of the Phoenix metropolitan region,USA |
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| Authors: | A Buyantuyev J Wu |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-4601, USA;2. Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-4601, USA;1. Department of Resources and Environment, School of River & Ocean Engineering, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing 400074, China;2. School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Hankou Road 22, Nanjing 210093, China;3. College of Geography and Environment, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China;1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Process and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;2. School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;1. College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210000, China;2. International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210000, China;3. Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science and Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210000, China;1. Department of Economics, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China;2. Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, USA;3. School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China;1. Department of Spatial Information & Digital Engineering, School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China;2. Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, New York University, 70 Washington Square South, New York City, NY, 10012, USA |
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| Abstract: | Previous studies have found that urbanization often decreases net primary production (NPP), an important integrative measure of ecosystem functioning. In arid environments, however, urbanization may boost productivity by introducing highly productive plant communities and weakening the coupling of plant growth to naturally occurring cycles of water and nutrients. We tested these ideas by comparing NPP estimated for natural and anthropogenic land covers in the Phoenix metropolitan region of USA using MODIS NDVI data and a simplified parametric NPP model. Most anthropogenic land covers exhibited higher production than the natural desert. Consequently, the combined urban and agricultural areas contributed more to the regional primary production than the natural desert did in normal and dry years, whereas this pattern was reversed in wet years. Primary production of this urban landscape was only weakly correlated with rainfall, but strongly with socio-economic variables. Our productivity estimates agreed well with NPP predicted by a process-based ecosystem model for the area. Significant uncertainties, however, remain due to extremely high heterogeneity of urban vegetation. Nevertheless, our results clearly show that urbanization may not only increase regional NPP and disrupt the coupling between vegetation and precipitation, but also increase spatial heterogeneity of NPP in this arid region. |
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