Urban sprawl and natural areas encroachment: linking land cover change and economic development in the Florida Everglades

Abstract

This paper presents a model treating agricultural and urban land uses simultaneously. In particular, it takes the urban model stemming from Alonso and weds it to the seminal agricultural model developed by von Thunen. In so doing, it extends the Muth framework, which explains the encroachment of agricultural lands by linking two industries with two different forms of land use. The present formulation considers both the encroachment of natural areas and the loss of agricultural land, or urban sprawl. It also adds realism to the two-sector model of Muth by (1) reflecting appropriate sectoral behaviors for residential land consumers and farmers, and by (2) explicitly addressing structural linkages between sectors. Using the model, the paper demonstrates sufficient conditions for switching in the regimes that govern loss of natural areas. The empirical case of South Florida is considered through an application of geographic information systems to digital map archives of the region based on remotely sensed data. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.