Spatiotemporal Landscape Pattern Change in Response to Future Urbanisation in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA

Urban growth combined with increasing population modifies landscape structure and functions at various scales. Identifying the accumulated effects of urbanisation on landscape composition and configuration over time is crucial to anticipate the functional change of altered landscape and to gauge landscape sustainability. Focusing on critical ecosystems, this study aims to understand how landscape patterns will evolve in response to the proposed development plans in Maricopa County, Arizona. Two primary GIS data layers were developed including the urban ecosystem layer with different natural land cover types (e.g. desert shrub, grassland, green space, and agriculture) and the urbanisation layer with residential, commercial, and recreational land use. To examine the spatiotemporal pattern change, urbanisation scenarios were designed with a basis on development status and implementation certainty, along with landscape metrics calculation. The findings demonstrated how the landscape metrics behave differently across different urbanisation conditions and which type of landscape will be most likely sensitive to future urbanisation processes. The study provides significant implications for landscape planning and guides planners to seek more optimal alternatives among various policy decisions.