Assessing the effect of modified accessibility on land cover change

Abstract

Policies taken towards transportation influence patterns of land cover change and in recent years, significant investments have been made in rail infrastructure in England. The introduction of high speed rail services, a present investigation of the feasibility of a second high speed rail line in addition to plans for opening many additional rail stations seem to suggest this mode is going through a renaissance. Between now and 2025, a great amount of natural land cover in England will be converted to artificial surfaces through development processes. Alternative scenarios are generated using the Regional Urban Growth (RUG) model and future change scenarios are investigated. It is argued that by incorporating transportation features into land use and cover change (LUCC) models in a spatially explicit fashion, the location of future change can be more accurately predicted.