Agricultural implications of providing soil-based constraints on urban expansion: Land use forecasts to 2050

Urbanization onto adjacent farmlands directly reduces the agricultural area available to meet the resource needs of a growing society. Soil conservation is a common objective in urban planning, but little focus has been placed on targeting soil value as a metric for conservation. This study assigns...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of environmental management 2018-07, Vol.217, p.677-689
Main Authors: Smidt, Samuel J., Tayyebi, Amin, Kendall, Anthony D., Pijanowski, Bryan C., Hyndman, David W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Cities
Conservation of Natural Resources
Land transformation model
Land use change
Michigan
Soil
Soil conservation
Urban planning
Urbanization
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Summary:Urbanization onto adjacent farmlands directly reduces the agricultural area available to meet the resource needs of a growing society. Soil conservation is a common objective in urban planning, but little focus has been placed on targeting soil value as a metric for conservation. This study assigns commodity and water storage values to the agricultural soils across all of the watersheds in Michigan's Lower Peninsula to evaluate how cities might respond to a soil conservation-based urbanization strategy. Land Transformation Model (LTM) simulations representing both traditional and soil conservation-based urbanization, are used to forecast urban area growth from 2010 to 2050 at five year intervals. The expansion of urban areas onto adjacent farmland is then evaluated to quantify the conservation effects of soil-based development. Results indicate that a soil-based protection strategy significantly conserves total farmland, especially more fertile soils within each soil type. In terms of revenue, ∼$88 million (in current dollars) would be conserved in 2050 using soil-based constraints, with the projected savings from 2011 to 2050 totaling more than $1.5 billion. Soil-based urbanization also increased urban density for each major metropolitan area. For example, there were 94,640 more acres directly adjacent to urban land by 2050 under traditional development compared to the soil-based urbanization strategy, indicating that urban sprawl was more tightly contained when including soil value as a metric to guide development. This study indicates that implementing a soil-based urbanization strategy would better satisfy future agricultural resource needs than traditional urban planning. [Display omitted] •Urbanization onto adjacent farmland does not preserve high quality soils.•A soil-based development strategy was integrated into the Land Transformation Model.•Simulations forecast urbanization through 2050 for the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.•Soil-based development conserves high quality soils and increases urban density.•Over $1.5 billion in agricultural revenue is conserved with soil-based development.
ISSN:0301-4797
1095-8630
DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.03.042