Abstract
Urbanization is arguably the most dramatic form of land transformation that profoundly influences biological diversity and human life. Quantifying landscape pattern and its change is essential for the monitoring and assessment of ecological consequences of urbanization. Combining gradient analysis with landscape metrics, we attempted to quantify the spatial pattern of urbanization in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona, USA. Several landscape metrics were computed along a 165 km long and 15 km wide transect with a moving window. The research was designed to address four research questions: How do different land use types change with distance away from the urban center? Do different land use types have their own unique spatial signatures? Can urbanization gradients be detected using landscape pattern analysis? How do the urban gradients differ among landscape metrics? The answers to these questions were generally affirmative and informative. The results showed that the spatial pattern of urbanization could be reliably quantified using landscape metrics with a gradient analysis approach, and the location of the urbanization center could be identified precisely and consistently with multiple indices. Different land use types exhibited distinctive, but not necessarily unique, spatial signatures that were dependent on specific landscape metrics. The changes in landscape pattern along the transect have important ecological implications, and quantifying the urbanization gradient, as illustrated in this paper, is an important first step to linking pattern with processes in urban ecological studies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen P.M. and Sanglier M. 1979. A dynamic model of urban growth: II. J. Social Biol. Struct. 2: 269-278.
Antrop M. and Van Eetvelde V. 2000. Holistic aspects of suburban landscapes: Visual image interpretation and landscape metrics. Landsc. Urban Plann. 50: 43-58.
Baker L.A., Hope D., Xu Y., Edmonds J. and Lauver L. 2001. Nitrogen Balance for the Central Arizona-Phoenix (CAP) Ecosystem. Ecosystems 4: 582-602.
Batty M. 1997. Cellular automata and urban form: A primer. J. Amer. Plann. Assoc. 63: 266-274.
Batty M. and Longley P. 1989. Urban growth and form: Scaling, fractal geometry, and diffusion-limited aggregation. Environ. Plann. A 21: 1447-1472.
Blair R. 1996. Land use and avian species diversity along an urban gradient. Ecol. Appl.: 506-519.
Breuste J., Feldmann H. and Uhlmann O. 1998. Urban Ecology. Springer, Berlin.
Burgess E.W. 1925. The growth of the city: an introduction to a research project. In: Park R.E., Burgess E.W. and McKenzie R. (eds), The City. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 47-62.
Christaller W. 1933. Central Places in Southern Germany. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA.
Collins J.P., Kinzig A., Grimm N.B., Fagan W.F., Hope D., Wu J. et al. 2000. A new urban ecology. Amer. Sci. 88: 416-425.
Cook E.A. 1991. Urban landscape networks: an ecological planning framework. Landsc. Res. 16: 8-15.
Couclelis H. 1985. Cellular worlds: A framework for modelling micro-macro dynamics. Environ. Plann. A 17: 585-596.
Foresman T.W., Pickett S.T.A. and Zipperer W.C. 1997. Methods for spatial and temporal land use and land cover assessment for urban ecosystems and application in the greater Baltimore-Chesapeake region. Urban Ecosys. 1: 201-216.
Frohn R.C. 1998. Remote Sensing for Landscape Ecology: New Metric Indicators for Monitoring, Modeling, and Assessment of Ecosystems. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.
Grimm N., Grove J.M., Pickett S.T.A. and Redman C.L. 2000. Integrated approaches to long-term studies of urban ecological systems. BioSci. 50: 571-584.
Harris C.D. and Ullman E.L. 1945. The nature of cities. Ann. Am. Acad. Polit. So. Sci. 242: 7-17.
Hess G. 1994. Pattern and error in landscape ecology: A commentary. Landsc. Ecol. 9: 3-5.
Hess G.R. and Bay J.M. 1997. Generating confidence intervals for composition-based landscape indexes. Landsc. Ecol. 12: 309-320.
Hobbs E.R. 1988. Species richness of urban forest patches and implications for urban landscape diversity. Landsc. Ecol. 1: 141-152.
Hoyt H. 1939. The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities. Federal Housing Administration, Washington, DC, USA.
Hunsaker C.T., O'Neill R.V., Jackson B.L., Timmins S.P., Levine D.A. and Norton D.J. 1994. Sampling to characterize landscape pattern. Landsc. Ecol. 9: 207-226.
Jelinski D.E. and Wu J. 1996. The modifiable areal unit problem and implications for landscape ecology. Landsc. Ecol. 11: 129-140.
Jenerette G.D. and Wu J. 2001. Analysis and simulation of land use change in the central Arizona-Phoenix region. Landsc. Ecol. 16: 611-626.
Kowarik I. 1990. Some responses of flora and vegetation to urbanization in central Europe. In: Sukopp H., Hejny S. and Kowarik I. (eds), Urban Ecology: Plants and Plant Communities in Urban Environments. SPB Academic Publishing bv, The Hague, The Netherlands, pp. 45-74.
Knowles-Yanez K., Moritz C., Fry J., Redman C.L., Bucchin M. and McCartney P.H. 1999. Historic Land Use: Phase I Report on Generalized Land Use. Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Lösch A. 1954. The Economics of Location. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticutt, USA.
Loucks O.L. 1994. Sustainability in urban ecosystems: Beyond an object of study. In: Platt R.H., Rowntree R.A. and Muick P.C. (eds), The Ecological City. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, pp. 49-65.
Luck M.A., Jenerette G.D., Wu J. and Grimm N. 2001. The urban funnel model and spatially heterogeneous ecological footprint. Ecosystems 4: 782-796.
McDonnell M.J., Pickett S., Groffman P. and Bohlen P. 1997. Ecosystem processes along an urban-to-rural gradient. Urban Ecosys. 1: 21-36.
McDonnell M.J. and Pickett S.T.A. 1990. Ecosystem structure and function along urban-rural gradients: An unexploited opportunity for ecology. Ecology 71: 1232-1237.
McGarigal K. and Marks B.J. 1995. FRAGSTATS: Spatial Pattern Analysis Program for Quantifying Landscape Structure. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-351. Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA-Forest Service, Portland, Oregon, USA.
McIntyre N.E., Knowles-Yanez K. and Hope D. 2001. Urban ecology as an interdisciplinary field: Differences in the use of 'urban' between the social and natural sciences. Urban Ecosys. 4: 5-24.
Naveh Z. and Lieberman A.S. 1984. Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application. Springer-Verlag, New York, New York, USA.
O'Neill R.V., Krummel J.R., Gardner R.H., Sugihara G., Jackson B., DeAngelis D.L. et al. 1988. Indices of landscape pattern. Landsc. Ecol. 1: 153-162.
Park R.E., Burgess E.W. and McKenzie R. 1925. The City in. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Pickett S.T.A., Burch J.W.R., Dalton S.E., Foresman T.W., Grove J.M. and Rowntree R. 1997. A conceptual framework for the study of human ecosystems in urban areas. Urban Ecosys. 1: 185-199.
Portugali J. 2000. Self-Organization and the City. Springer, Berlin.
Pouyat R.V. and McDonnell M.J. 1991. Heavy metal accumulations in forest soils along an urban-rural gradient in southeastern New York, USA. Water, Soil, and Air Pollution 57/58: 797-807.
Pouyat R.V., McDonnell M.J. and Pickett S.T.A. 1995. Soil characteristics of oak stands along an urban-rural land-use gradient. J. Env. Quality 24: 516-526.
Redman C.L. 1999. Human dimensions of ecosystem studies. Ecosystems 2: 296-298.
Schweitzer F. (ed.) 1997. Self-Organization of Complex Structures. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Sukopp H. 1990. Urban ecology and its application in Europe. In: Sukopp H., Hejny S. and Kowarik I. (eds), Urban Ecology: Plants and Plant Communities in Urban Environments. SPB Academic Publishing bv, The Hague, The Netherlands, pp. 2-22.
Sukopp H. 1998. Urban ecology-Scientific and practical aspects. In: Breuste J., Feldmann H. and Uhlmann O. (eds), Urban Ecology. Springer, Berlin, Germany, pp. 3-16.
Tobler W.R. 1979. Cellular geography. In: Gale S. and Olsson G.D. (eds), Philosophy in Geography. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 379-386.
Turner M.G. 1989. Landscape ecology: The Effect of pattern on process. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 20: 171-197.
Turner M.G., O'Neill R.V., Gardner R.H. and Milne B.T. 1989. Effects of changing spatial scale on the analysis of landscape pattern. Landsc. Ecol. 3: 153-162.
von Thünen J.H. 1825. Der Isolierte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirtshaft und Nationalökonomie. Hamburg, Rostock, Germany.
White R. and Engelen G. 1993. Cellular automata and fractal urban form: a cellular modelling approach to the evolution of urban land-use patterns. Environ. Plann. A 25: 1175-1199.
Whittaker R.H. 1975. Communities and Ecosystems. MacMillan, New York, USA.
Wilson A.G. 1976. Catastrophe theory and urban modelling: An application to modal choice. Environ. Plann. A 8: 351-356.
Wilson A.G. 1981. Catastrophy Theory and Bifurcation. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, California, USA.
Wong D.S.S. and Fotheringham A.S. 1990. Urban systems as examples of bounded chaos: Exploring the relationship between fractal dimension, rank-size, and rural-to-urban migration. Geografiska Annaler 72B: 89-99.
Wu J. 2000. Landscape Ecology: Pattern, Process, Scale and Hierarchy. Higher Education Press, Beijing, China.
Wu J. and David J. 2002. A spatially explicit hierarchical approach to modeling complex ecological systems: Theory and applications. Ecol. Modell (in press).
Wu J., Jelinski D.E., Luck M. and Tueller P.T. 2000. Multiscale analysis of landscape heterogeneity: Scale variance and pattern metrics. Geog. Info. Sci. 6: 6-19.
Wu J. and Loucks O.L. 1995. From balance-of-nature to hierarchical patch dynamics: A paradigm shift in ecology. Q. Rev. Biol. 70: 439-466.
Zhu W. and Carreiro M.M. 1999. Chemoautotrophic nitrification in acidic forest soils along an urban-to-rural transect. Soil Biol. Biochem.: 1091-1100.
Zipperer W.C., Wu J., Pouyat R.V. and Pickett S.T.A. 2000. The application of ecological principles to urban and urbanizing landscapes. Ecol. Appl. 10: 685-688.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Luck, M., Wu, J. A gradient analysis of urban landscape pattern: a case study from the Phoenix metropolitan region, Arizona, USA. Landscape Ecology 17, 327–339 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020512723753
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020512723753