Date of Award

5-2013

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Environment and Society

Committee Chair(s)

Richard E. Toth

Committee

Richard E. Toth

Committee

Shujuan Li

Committee

Zhao Ma

Abstract

Climate change is tightly linked with urbanization. Urban development with increasing greenhouse gas emission worsens climate change, while climate change in turn influence hydroclimate and ecosystem functions, and indirectly affect urban systems. The Intermountain West is experiencing rapid urban growth, climate change interacting with urbanization poses new challenges to the Intermountain West. Urban planning needs to adapt to these new changes and constrains, and to develop new tools and plans to effectively respond to climate changes. An urban growth model SLEUTH is applied to predict the future urban growth and land use dynamics in the Intermountain west, using Cache County as a case study. Through the creation of scenarios, model outputs provide best estimates of future land use dynamics and urban growth under different policy and management conditions related to climate change scenarios. The success of integrating climate change into urban planning model opened up the opportunities for planners and decisions makers to foresee the potential consequences brought by individual policy or management, and to better address climate change issues in the “transitional” urban environment.

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