Definition
Land use encompasses the many ways in which humans around the world utilize the landscape and those resources present in the surface or near-surface environment. This can range from intense utilization associated with urbanization such as Paris to the preservation of natural conditions as found in the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness in Alaska (Marker 2013; FAO 2015).
Introduction
Land use documents historical and current exploitation of the land by people and varies depending on characteristics such as natural features, land cover, and climate (NOAA 2015). The origins of many present-day urban centers can be traced to some landscape feature that made it a desirable place for people to build a settlement. Over time, a growing population expands the original settlement to towns, cities, megacities, and metropolitan areas as a consequence of landscape, climate, natural resources, cultural development, and historic events. Often, modern cities can trace their origins to...
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De Graff, J.V. (2018). Land Use. In: Bobrowsky, P.T., Marker, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73568-9_182
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73568-9_182
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