Journal of Resources and Ecology >
Changes in the Geographical Distributions of Global Human Settlements
YE Hongtao, E-mail: yeht.19s@igsnrr.ac.cn |
Received date: 2021-02-14
Accepted date: 2021-05-06
Online published: 2021-11-26
Supported by
The National Science and Technology Key Project(2016YFB0502301)
In recent decades, the continuous growth in the population has significantly changed the area of human settlements across the globe. The change of human settlements has brought great challenges to human development, environmental change, resource allocation, and disaster prediction and prevention. In the current paper, we integrate data products provided by the European Commission, Joint Research Centre with multi-source remote sensing data to analyze the changing trends of global human settlements under varying geographical distributions from 1990 to 2014. The results demonstrate that on the global scale, human settlements are generally distributed in Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the eastern United States, the Gulf Coast and the coast of Oceania, with most of them distributed in urban agglomerations and coastal areas. Global human settlements have continued to grow over the past 25 years, mainly in East Asia, Western Europe and the United States. The area of human settlements in eastern Europe has been slightly reduced. The distribution of human settlements is affected by climate, water and terrain conditions. Humans were more likely to have settled in temperate regions with wetter climates, and most of the human settlements are located within 500 km of the coastline and 30 km of land-based water sources. Our results can provide insights into further investigations of the spatio-temporal dynamics of human settlements and its connections to ecological and environmental issues in a changing world.
Key words: human settlements; protected area; temporal and spatial variation; GHSL
YE Hongtao , MA Ting . Changes in the Geographical Distributions of Global Human Settlements[J]. Journal of Resources and Ecology, 2021 , 12(6) : 829 -839 . DOI: 10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2021.06.011
Fig. 1 Global area of human settlements over the past 30 years Note: AF-Africa; AS-Asia; EU-Europe; NA-North America; OA-Oceania; SA-South America. |
Fig. 2 Distribution of human settlements in 2014 |
Fig. 3 Distribution of human settlements by longitude and latitude |
Fig. 4 Top 20 countries in terms of human settlements and rank-size rule analysis |
Fig. 5 Changes in human settlements (1990-2014) |
Fig. 6 Changes in human settlements in Asia (1990-2014) |
Fig. 7 Changes in human settlements in regions of North America (1990-2014) |
Fig. 8 Variations in human settlements in Europe, Western Asia and the northern parts of Africa (1990-2014). |
Table 1 Areas of human settlements within 10 and 50 km of protected areas |
Distance (km) | Area (km²) | ||
---|---|---|---|
1990 | 2000 | 2014 | |
≤ 10 | 21475 | 25655 | 30010 |
≤ 50 | 86930 | 102020 | 117270 |
Fig. 9 Distribution of human settlement areas close to protected areas |
Fig. 10 Distribution of human settlement area close to ocean |
Fig. 11 Distribution of human settlement area close to land water |
Table 2 Köppen-Geiger climate classification |
Name | Representative characteristics |
---|---|
Af | Tropical, rainforest |
Am | Tropical, monsoon |
Aw | Tropical, savannah |
BWh | Arid, desert, hot |
BWk | Arid, desert, cold |
BSh | Arid, steppe, hot |
BSk | Arid, steppe, cold |
Csa | Temperate, dry summer, hot summer |
Csb | Temperate, dry summer, warm summer |
Csc | Temperate, dry summer, cold summer |
Cwa | Temperate, dry winter, hot summer |
Cwb | Temperate, dry winter, warm summer |
Cwc | Temperate, dry winter, cold summer |
Cfa | Temperate, no dry season, hot summer |
Cfb | Temperate, no dry season, warm summer |
Cfc | Temperate, no dry season, cold summer |
Dsa | Cold, dry summer, hot summer |
Dsb | Cold, dry summer, warm summer |
Dsc | Cold, dry summer, cold summer |
Dsd | Cold, dry summer, very cold winter |
Dwa | Cold, dry winter, hot summer |
Dwb | Cold, dry winter, warm summer |
Dwc | Cold, dry winter, cold summer |
Dwd | Cold, dry winter, very cold winter |
Dfa | Cold, no dry season, hot summer |
Dfb | Cold, no dry season, warm summer |
Dfc | Cold, no dry season, cold summer |
Dfd | Cold, no dry season, very cold winter |
ET | Polar, tundra |
EF | Polar, frost |
Fig. 12 Distribution of human settlements among the different Köppen-Geiger climatic classifications |
Fig. 13 Human settlement area distribution relative to elevation |
Fig. 14 Human settlement area distribution relative to slope |
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