The Department of Geography Colloquium series presents Dr. Rinku Roy Chowdhury of Indiana University on “Is Urbanization Homogenizing America? Comparing Residential Landscapes across Social and Biophysical Gradients” on Friday, April 4, at 3:05 p.m. in Clippinger 119.
Dr. Rinku Roy Chowdhury
ABSTRACT: Urban residential expansion is an important component of global changes in land use and vegetative cover. At regional and local scales, residential land use and management are driven by diverse socio-ecological factors, yet may result in similar outcomes in otherwise distinct eco-climatic regions. I present initial results of collaborative research across three US cities (Miami, Baltimore, Boston), examining whether urban land use change leads to homogenization of land/forest cover. Residential land cover is quantified with high-resolution remotely sensed data and spatial analyses, and linked to social characteristics at neighborhood and broader geographic scales. Understanding the nature and extent of urban homogenization of vegetative/forest and other ecological structure is critical to developing a conceptual basis and database for estimating the impacts of these processes at the local-scale to regional scales, and for developing strategies to improve the sustainability of this increasingly common land use/land cover type.
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