Built-up areas within and around protected areas: global patterns and 40-year trends
Protected areas (PAs) are a key strategy in global efforts to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services that are critical for human well-being. Most of PAs around include some built-up structures within their boundaries or surrounding areas, ranging from individual buildings to villages, towns and cities. These structures, and the human activities associated to them, can exert direct and indirect pressures on PAs. Here we present the first global analysis of current patterns and observed long-term trends in built-up areas within terrestrial PAs and their immediate surroundings. We calculate for each PA larger than 25 km2 and for its 10-km unprotected buffer zone the percentage of land area covered by built-up areas in 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2014. We find that globally built-up areas cover only 0.1% of PA extent and a much higher 1.8% of the unprotected buffers as of 2014, compared to 0.6% of all land (protected or unprotected). Built-up extent in and around PAs is highest in Europe and Asia, and lowest in Africa and Oceania. Built-up area percentage is higher in coastal and small PAs, and lower in older PAs and in PAs with more strict management categories. From 1975 to 2014, the increase in built-up area was 15 times larger in the 10-km unprotected buffers than within PAs. Our findings highlight the relative effectiveness of PAs in preventing the expansion of built-up structures within their boundaries but also the need to carefully manage the considerable pressure that PAs face from their immediate surroundings.
DE LA FUENTE MARTIN Begona;
BERTZKY Bastian;
DELLI Giacomo;
MANDRICI Andrea;
CONTI Michele;
FLORCZYK Aneta;
FREIRE Sergio;
SCHIAVINA Marcello;
BASTIN Lucy;
DUBOIS Gregoire;
2020-12-11
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
JRC116114
2351-9894 (online),
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989420308325?via%3Dihub,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC116114,
10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01291 (online),
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