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Forest fires are becoming increasingly frequent throughout the globe, influencing socioeconomic and environmental aspects and endangering ecosystems and life. The forest fire risk zoning is an auxiliary tool for elaborating and implementing preventive policies. The present study aims to execute the forest fire risk zoning for the metropolitan region of Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, testing its efficiency through the relationship with geolocated fires that occurred from 2011 to 2016. Thematic maps were made through information related to demographic density, road system, land use and cover, slope, orientation and altimetry of the terrain. The efficiency of the proposed zoning, 45.8% and 44.0% of the geolocated fires that occurred in the study area in the period 2011 to 2016 were present in areas considered with \"very high\" and \"high\" risk, respectively, demonstrating that the proposed zoning can be used to develop prevention policies for the metropolitan region of Curitiba.

Alternative food networks (AFNs) represent local food systems and short supply chain networks alternative to global food systems. These networks are often developed within rural-urban interfaces and take various forms, due to the high propensity towards the innovative organization of the network. The aim of our study is to map the currently applied, distinctive innovative organizational models of alternative food networks by identifying the organizational innovations of these networks in available case studies. Adopting the lens of organizational sociology and using space-filling visualization, the study compares various forms of localized and spatially extended AFNs. The results of our comparative analysis suggest that main aspects of AFNs' differentiation are the models of network organization, applied coordination models, competences structures of the involved actors, nature of the intermediaries and their roles within the AFNs, and the level of customer engagement. Innovation processes within short food networks can be driven by the producer, intermediaries, and communities of consumers. We identified three types of AFNs defined with regard to the predominant direction of flows in the urban-rural interface: (1) AFNs localized within the borders of the city, (2) AFNs based on interconnecting the rural farmers located within rural settlements adjacent to the city and to the consumers in cities, and also (3) AFNs localized in peri-urban interfaces with distant customers.

Written culture was always considered an indicator of civilisation. The aim of this paper is to analyse the distribution of development and of accessibility to written culture in the urban‐rural interface (U‐RI) of Bucharest, Romania, to assess their correlation and the impact of the current pandemic crisis. Based on the population’s perception regarding their accessibility to written culture through the application of over 200 questionnaires, the analysis showed that bookstores and libraries are mostly competitors. The number of readers and read books is decreasing in the U‐RI due to the lack of prioritisation of these services by the local authorities, as reflected in a general decreasing trend of the number of written culture users. The consumption of literature in new formats contributes to less place‐dependent cultural services, especially in the high‐income areas, while the Principal Component Analysis of cultural data demonstrates a clustering of localities in the U‐RI that is strongly correlated with the economic and demographic characteristics of those areas. However, despite the increased accessibility to online, non‐place‐dependent written culture, the numbers of books read and bought in both physical and digital format had a generally decreasing trend during the pandemic.

The role of private land in biodiversity conservation is recognized, yet has received limited attention in the literature. Increasing urban development on the rural-urban interface of regional cities in Australia is creating a fragmented landscape of urban and conservation areas. Residents in these areas can assist in biodiversity conservation. Data on residents' pro-conservation behaviours, knowledge, attitudes and connection to nature were collected using a mail questionnaire survey with 300 returned. Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks, relationships between environmental knowledge, connection to nature and pro-environmental behaviours were analysed. Findings revealed that many residents participate in a variety of pro-conservation behaviours and are supportive of biodiversity. However, their knowledge of local biodiversity is low and are less likely to participate in community-based conservation actions. Study findings can assist local government and conservation organisations tailor their biodiversity conservation strategies to enhance biodiversity conservation on private land.

Metropolitan areas worldwide have grown rapidly and are usually surrounded by peri-urban zones that are neither urban nor rural. Despite widespread use of the term ‘peri-urban’, physical determination of these spaces is difficult due to their transient nature and multiple definitions. While many have identified peri-urban areas regionally or globally, questions persist on where exactly the peri-urban is located, and what are the most apt methods to delineate its boundaries. The answers are pertinent towards framing targeted policies for governing the dynamic socio-spatial transformations in these zones. This paper reviews peri-urban research over the last 50-plus years to discern the existing methodologies for its identification/demarcation and their applications. For this, a total of 3124 documents on peri-urban studies were identified through keyword searches in Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Thereafter, 56 documents were examined that explicitly dealt with demarcating peri-urban zones. Results reveal that there is no standout/generalized method for peri-urban demarcation. Rather, these approaches are geographically specific and vary across developed and developing countries, due to differences in land-use patterns, socioeconomic drivers, and political systems. Thus, we recommend developing a ‘pluralistic’ framework for determining peri-urban boundaries at the regional–global scale to enable better framing of relevant policies.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the spatial manifestation of human communities coupled with vegetated ecosystems. Spatial delineation of the WUI is important for wildfire policy and management, but is typically defined according to spatial relationships between housing development and wildland vegetation without explicit consideration of fire risk. A fire risk-based definition of WUI can enable a better distribution of management investment so as to maximize social return. We present a novel methodological approach to delineate the WUI based on a fire risk assessment. The approach establishes a geographical framework to model fire risk via machine learning and generate multi-scale, variable-specific spatial thresholds for translating fire probabilities into mapped output. To determine whether fire-based WUI mapping better captures the spatial congruence of houses and wildfires than conventional methods, we compared national and subnational fire-based WUI maps for Chile to WUI maps generated only with housing and vegetation thresholds. The two mapping approaches exhibited broadly similar spatial patterns, the WUI definitions covering almost the same area and containing similar proportions of the housing units in the area under study (17.1% vs. 17.9%), but the fire-based WUI accounted for 13.8% more spatial congruence of fires and people (47.1% vs. 33.2% of ignitions). Substantial regional variability was found in fire risk drivers and the corresponding spatial mapping thresholds, suggesting there are benefits to developing different WUI maps for different scales of application. We conclude that a dynamic, multi-scale, fire-based WUI mapping approach should provide more targeted and effective support for decision making than conventional approaches.

A number of commentaries and articles have been published in recent years reflecting on the nature, history and practice of rural geography. The introspective mood follows a period in which rural geography has been widely considered to have been resurgent, but indicates concerns about the unevenness of progress in rural geography, and about the readiness of the subdiscipline to address new challenges. This article, the first of three progress reports on rural geography, focuses on attempts within these interventions to rethink the boundaries of rural geography and its connections with other fields of study. First, it examines renewed debates on the definition and delimitation of the rural, including efforts to rematerialize the rural. Second, it considers the rejuvenation of work on rural—urban linkages, including concepts of city regions, exurbanization and rurbanity. Third, it discusses the interdisciplinary engagement of rural geographers, including collaboration with physical and natural scientists.

We posit a spatially explicit, county-level model of the hog production sector and estimate how numerous firm-specific, locality-specific, and spatial agglomeration factors affect the location, movement, and intensity of hog production within 15 key hog production states. Spatial agglomeration, urban encroachment, input availability, firm productivity, local economy, slaughter access, and regulatory stringency variables affect the sample regions' spatial organization. Analyses suggest that western states in the sample may shape hog production levels by wielding traditional business recruitment and retention tools (e.g., tax rates, environmental stringency) while Corn Belt states may shape hog production via nontraditional tools (e.g., land use controls).

The urban-rural interface is structured by intense social, economic, and environmental interdependences among urban and rural places. Accordingly, we argue that the rural-urban interface should be governed in a new, hybrid manner—one that accounts for both place-based and relational exigencies. The United States lacks a coherent, coordinated approach to multijurisdictional planning and governance, but multijurisdictional governance can and often does succeed through cooperation at the state and local levels. To illustrate this point, and to ground the theoretical discussion, we present three examples of multijurisdictional planning that are effective at the local level, and one example that has failed to accomplish such goals. Governance of the zone of rural-urban interactions will be more effective and accountable if policies and programs involve not only the constituent municipalities located in this space, but also the social, economic, and environmental relationships in which these communities are embedded.

ContextQuantifying the interactions between land disturbances and energy and water balances, particularly evapotranspiration (ET), is helpful for understanding the land-atmospheric interactions and assessing the effects of urbanization on local climate and hydrological processes at a landscape scale.ObjectivesTo investigate the mechanisms of ecohydrological response to urbanization from the perspectives of ET or energy balances in a distributed fashion at the watershed scale. To identify spatial ‘hot spots’, in which ET, and thus watershed hydrology, are most pronounced in response to land use change so that limited watershed landscape management resources can be applied efficiently.MethodsThis process-based research quantified spatial patterns of ET and other energy fluxes in a rapidly urbanizing rice paddy-dominated watershed, Qinhuai River Basin (QRB), using a spatially explicit land surface energy balance model (SEBAL).ResultsThe QRB experienced a rapid land use change in urban–rural interface (URI) area, resulting in a significant reduction in actual ET (− 9.4 mm yr−1) but a significant increase in sensible heat (3.71 W m−2 yr−1) and soil heat fluxes (0.85 W m−2 yr−1) during the growing season from 2001 to 2019. The change in energy partitioning at the watershed scale was dominated by URI area identified as the ‘hot spots’ of ecohydrological change within a heterogeneous basin.ConclusionsKnowledge gained from this study improves parameterizing distributed watershed ecohydrological models (e.g., ET processes) to guide urban planning. Effective watershed landscape management and planning that aims at mitigating the negative impacts of urbanization should focus on URI by preserving vegetation and local wetlands (e.g., rice paddies).