Impacts of Urbanization and Land Use Change over Water Resources
Anthropogenic land use changes have taken place through time, and will continue in the future as the country develops. Such changes have affected the occurrence of hydrological processes, and impacted water resources. This chapter describes these changes
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Impacts of Urbanization and Land Use Change over Water Resources Tomás Bunster, Jorge Gironás, Carolina Rojas, and Carlos Bonilla
Abstract Anthropogenic land use changes have taken place through time, and will continue in the future as the country develops. Such changes have affected the occurrence of hydrological processes, and impacted water resources. This chapter describes these changes and their evolution through time. Urban and population growth, expansion and intensification of agriculture and productive forestry, and the occurrence of wildfires in Chile are characterized. Furthermore, the main impacts over water resources and current practices to cope with these changes are presented. Finally, future challenges are described, together with the concluding remarks. Keywords Land use · Urbanization · Wildfire · Population growth
T. Bunster Departamento de Ingeniería Hidráulica y Ambiental, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile J. Gironás (*) Departamento de Ingeniería Hidráulica y Ambiental, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile CEDEUS, Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable, Santiago, Chile CIGIDEN, Centro de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada del Riesgo de Desastres, Santiago, Chile CCG-UC, Centro Interdisciplinario de Cambio Global UC, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] C. Rojas CEDEUS, Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable, Santiago, Chile Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile C. Bonilla Departamento de Ingeniería Hidráulica y Ambiental, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile CEDEUS, Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable, Santiago, Chile © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Fernández, J. Gironás (eds.), Water Resources of Chile, World Water Resources 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56901-3_20
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20.1 Introduction Over the past centuries, one of the primary modes of human intervention over the global environment has been the conversion of land. This land conversion can range from the modification of a landscape character without affecting its classification, to a complete replacement of one land cover with another (Mölders 2011). Around the world, these changes have been driven mainly by the need to feed and shelter the growing human enterprise. The expansion and intensification of agriculture, establishment and/or growth of urban settlements, and extraction of natural resources are some examples of anthropic activities that alter the land use of a certain location. The demands of increasing numbers of people at higher standards of living will most likely accelerate these land use changes around the world (DeFries and Eshleman 2004), together with an overall global environment modification. Land use changes over the Earth’s surface have multiple consequences for biophysical systems at different spatial and temporal scales, ranging from urban heat islands (Ward et al. 2016) and alte
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