Human settlement

About: Human settlement is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4873 publications have been published within this topic receiving 61347 citations. The topic is also known as: populated place & settlement.

The rising tide: assessing the risks of climate change and human settlements in low elevation coastal zones:

Abstract: Settlements in coastal lowlands are especially vulnerable to risks resulting from climate change, yet these lowlands are densely settled and growing rapidly. In this paper, we undertake the fi rst global review of the population and urban settlement patterns in the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ), defi ned here as the contiguous area along the coast that is less than 10 metres above sea level. Overall, this zone covers 2 per cent of the world's land area but contains 10 per cent of the world's population and 13 per cent of the world's urban population. A dis- proportionate number of the countries with a large share of their population in this zone are small island countries, but most of the countries with large populations in the zone are large countries with heavily populated delta regions. On average, the Least Developed Countries have a higher share of their population living in the zone (14 per cent) than do OECD countries (10 per cent), with even greater disparities in the urban shares (21 per cent compared to 11 per cent). Almost two- thirds of urban settlements with populations greater than 5 million fall, at least partly, in the zone. In some countries (most notably China), urbanization is driving a movement in population towards the coast. Reducing the risk of disasters related to climate change in coastal settlements will require a combination of mitigation, migration and settlement modifi cation.

Conservation where people live and work

Abstract: Effective conservation planning requires information from well-designed studies across a spectrum of land uses, ranging from wildlands to highly modified production landscapes and large cities. There is currently a lack of such information about human settlement, even though this is a major source of land-use change with serious implications for biodiversity. Fewer than 6% of the papers in recent volumes of Conservation Biology described work conducted in urban, suburban, or exurban areas or studies in which human settlement was considered explicitly. For a variety of reasons, conservation has tended to focus on lands with a relatively small human presence, often dominated by resource extraction and agriculture. Urbanization is occurring in numerous biodiversity hotspots worldwide, however, and has been identified as a primary cause of declines in many threatened and endangered species. Suburban and exurban growth are affecting biodiversity in many places once thought of as too remote to attract such levels of development. Conservation biologists must address the issue of human settlement to enhance the habitat value of unreserved lands for native species, to increase landscape connectivity between reserves, and to mitigate adverse influences on reserves from adjacent lands. Conservation and restoration of native habitats in densely settled areas also have social and educational value. We therefore suggest a more balanced approach in conservation biology to addressing the effects of human land use through increased attention to areas where people live and work.