4.6 Article

Modeling Urban Growth and the Impacts of Climate Change: The Case of Esmeraldas City, Ecuador

Journal

SUSTAINABILITY
Volume 14, Issue 8, Pages -

Publisher

MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/su14084704

Keywords

urban growth; climate change; Esmeraldas City; floods; landslide vulnerability; cellular automata

Funding

  1. Office of the Geographer at the U.S. Department of State
  2. American Association of Geographers (AAG)

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This research, conducted in the city of Esmeraldas in Ecuador, aims to create a predictive scenario of urban growth linked to future climate projections. The study finds a positive relationship between urban growth, the proportion of Afro-Ecuadorian people, and the risk of landslides and flooding. The findings suggest that future urban growth in Esmeraldas may increase vulnerability to climate change.
This research has been developed in the city of Esmeraldas, which is one of the poorest urban centers of Ecuador. Historically, the economic dynamics of the city have been related to the extraction of natural resources, but little has been invested in local populations. The objectives of this paper are, first, to create a predictive scenario of urban growth linked to future climate projections for Esmeraldas, with a focus on vulnerability to landslides and flooding; and second, to generate methodological advances related to the linkage between urban growth simulation and the downscaling of global models for climate change. This paper is based on spatially explicit simulation, Cellular Automata (CA), to capture the dynamics of urban processes. CA is linked to the analysis of vulnerability to climate change based on socioeconomic conditions and is focused on flooding- and landslide-exposed areas. We found that the proportion of Afro-Ecuadorian people and the risk of landslides and flooding are positively related to urban growth. Based on our future scenarios, the urban growth area in Esmeraldas will increase 50% compared to the year 2016. Moreover, if the existing trends continue, natural vegetation-including mangroves-will be removed by that time, increasing the vulnerability to climate change.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available