REVIEW article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Urban Ecology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1607614
Urbanization Indices Development and Use in the Coastal Ecological Realm: A Review
Provisionally accepted
- Brigham Young University, Provo, United States
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Human populations are moving to coastal regions at a rapid pace, and growing populations are creating large impacts on ecological systems through the development of infrastructure and resource use. Urbanization indexes (UI) are used for a wide range of purposes related to understanding how urban growth impacts both urban development and ecological systems. Most UIs are developed usinge different factors, and there is a lack of within their UI and are not standardizationed across studies even within the same study system. We reviewed the existing literature that utilizes a UI in the context of ecological questions within coastal regions to determine their utility in assessing how ecological impacts vary across coastal environments and are useful in identifying how urban growth is affecting ecosystems and species. We found that existing variation in UI development hampers the ability to make comparisons across studies and systems. To more fully understand the impacts of urbanization we recommend that UI'sUIs used in future studies be standardized to facilitate comparisons across time and studies. We offer guidance on how this can be done.
Keywords: Urbanization, Urban impacts, Urbanization index, coast, beach, intertidal, Ecological impacts
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Marlow and Griffen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bailey Marlow, Brigham Young University, Provo, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.