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Project
Summary
Last
Updated: 2009-05-15
Title
Global
Environmental Change and Urban Land Use Change in Peri-urban Area: A
case study of Taipei-Taoyuan area
Principal
investigator:
Shu-Li
Huang, Professor, Graduate Institute of Urban Planning
National
Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan 10433
Global environmental change has prompted concerns over the role of urban
areas in global systems.
Peri-urbanization,
both as a social phenomenon and a physical transformation of landscapes,
can be regarded as
an
impetus
for
global environmental
changes. Peri-urban areas are
frequently
characterized
by
valuable natural
environments and resource bases, and can provide essential life-support
functions for urban residents. The land use and land cover change in peri-urban areas
resulting from
urban sprawl,
and consequent
transformations in the biophysical and socioeconomic systems,
are
often
ignored
by urban planning professionals
and urban and rural
land
administrators.
The natural
environment of Taiwan is characterized by active
geomorphic processes with steep topography and unstable hydrologic
processes, which are
highly
sensitive to extreme climatic events such as typhoon. The
rapid economic growth of Taiwan from 1970¡V2000
transformed the island from a rural economy to an industrialized one.
Almost 80% of Taiwan¡¦s people currently live in urban areas, making it
an urbanized nation, and approximately 90% of the entire population
reside on the western coastal plain, where peri¡Vurbanization is
increasing
environmental pressure
and already threatens
the cities¡¦ life-supporting environments.
The
issue of
environmental change in peri-urban areas
was also
examined by
the Peri-Urban Environmental Change Project (PU-ECH)
of SCOPE.
Land use
change and ecosystem service in peri-urban areas should be seen and
valued differently. The PU-GEC project proposes studying the effect of
global environmental change and land use change
on ecosystem services in peri-urban areas,
using the Taipei-Taoyuan area
as a
case study.
Objectives
to be achieved by this project:
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To
study
the influence of
globalization
on
land use and land cover change in
the
Taipei-Taoyuan peri-urban area.
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To study changes
in
ecosystem service in
the
case
study peri-urban area
as a result of
land use and land cover change.
- To study
interactions among
global environmental change, peri-urbanization, and
ecosystem resilience in Taipei -Taoyuan area.
PU-GEC started on August 1 2007 and will run until
July 31 2010.
The project involves 5 collaborators from Singapore, China, USA, and
Canada.
The project is funded by the Grant No. NSC
96-2415-H-305-012-MY3
of the National Science Council in Taiwan.
The project
is
endorsed
by
Urbanization and Global Environmental
Change Project of IHDP
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