title: Future urban land expansion and implications for global croplands.
abstract: Urban expansion often occurs on croplands. However, there is little scientific understanding of how global patterns of future urban expansion will affect the world's cultivated areas. Here, we combine spatially explicit projections of urban expansion with datasets on global croplands and crop yields. Our results show that urban expansion will result in a 1.8-2.4% loss of global croplands by 2030, with substantial regional disparities. About 80% of global cropland loss from urban expansion will take place in Asia and Africa. In both Asia and Africa, much of the cropland that will be lost is more than twice as productive as national averages. Asia will experience the highest absolute loss in cropland, whereas African countries will experience the highest percentage loss of cropland. Globally, the croplands that are likely to be lost were responsible for 3-4% of worldwide crop production in 2000. Urban expansion is expected to take place on cropland that is 1.77 times more productive than the global average. The loss of cropland is likely to be accompanied by other sustainability risks and threatens livelihoods, with diverging characteristics for different megaurban regions. Governance of urban area expansion thus emerges as a key area for securing livelihoods in the agrarian economies of the Global South.
authors.affiliation: Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, 10829 Berlin, Germany.|Department Economics of Climate Change, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bren d'Amour
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography,Canterbury University, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Femke
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Reitsma
authors.affiliation: Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Baiocchi
authors.affiliation: Department of the Built Environment, University of Gävle, SE-80176 Gävle, Sweden.|Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barthel
authors.affiliation: Center for Geospatial Science, Applications and Technology (GEOSAT), Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.
authors.forename: Burak
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Güneralp
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social Ecology Vienna, Alpen-Adria Universitaet Klagenfurt, 1070 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Karl-Heinz
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Erb
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social Ecology Vienna, Alpen-Adria Universitaet Klagenfurt, 1070 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Haberl
authors.affiliation: Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, 10829 Berlin, Germany; creutzig@mcc-berlin.net.|Department Economics of Climate Change, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5710-3348
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Creutzig
authors.affiliation: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
authors.forename: Karen C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Seto
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa; D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D001208:Asia; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development*; D005544:Forecasting; D005843:Geography; D014507:Urbanization / Q000639:trends*
keywords: agricultural productivity; global land use change; livelihoods; megaurban regions; urbanization