During the last few decades Pennsylvania has been developing land at a rate much faster than the rate of population growth. Much of the expansion of urban and suburban development has come at the expense of farmland, forest land, and other areas of open space, mostly as the result of low-density, sprawling development. Currently, not much quantitative information is available describing urban sprawl in Pennsylvania at a local level (county and sub-county). This type of information is important for sound land use planning and decision making at the state and local level. The aim of this study is to design and evaluate sprawl indices using geospatial technologies and detailed local datasets that could be used to carefully track (urban) sprawl in Pennsylvania at a local level and to analyze some of the (potential) effects of sprawl on agriculture in Pennsylvania. Multiple sprawl metrics based on the conceptual definition of sprawl provided by Galster et al. (2001) - “Sprawl is a pattern of land use in an urban area that exhibits low levels of some combination of eight distinct dimensions: density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity, mixed uses, and proximity” – will be presented and discussed. The indices are intended to be used along the full spectrum of development (urban, suburban, rural). Reference: Galster, G.; Hanson, R.; Ratcliffe, M. R.; Wolman, H.; Coleman, S., and Freihage, J. Wrestling sprawl to the ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept. Housing Policy Debate. 2001; 12(4):681-717.
Maaike is a Ph.D. Candidate in Soil Science at Penn State University. Her research focuses on using geospatial technologies to monitor urban sprawl at the local level in Pennsylvania along the full spectrum of development (urban, suburban, and rural) and to analyze some of its (potential) effects on agriculture. Also, she is designing a sampling design that provides reasonably reliable local (county and sub-county) land use statistics in any study area, regardless of the land use composition and pattern in the area. Maaike has a Master of Science in Soil, Water and Atmosphere with a specialization in Regional Soil Science from the Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands. During her master’s research she was involved in projects in remote sensing and geostatistics.