Urban expansion and loss of primarily agricultural land are two of the challenges facing Jordan. Located in the most productive agricultural area of Jordan, Greater Irbid Municipality (GIM) uncontrolled urban growth has posed a grand challenge in both sustaining its prime croplands and developing comprehensive planning strategies. This study investigated the loss of agricultural land for urban growth in GIM from 1972–2050 and denoted the negative consequences of the amalgamation process of 2001 on farmland loss. The aim is to unfold and track historical land use/cover changes and forecast these changes to the future using a modified SLEUTH-3r urban growth model. The accuracy of prediction results was assessed in three different sites between 2015 and 2020. In 43 years the built-up area increased from 29.2 km² in 1972 to 71 km² in 2015. By 2050, the built-up urban area would increase to 107 km². The overall rate of increase, however, showed a decline across the study period, with the periods of 1990–2000 and 2000–2015 having the highest rate of built-up areas expansion at 68.6 and 41.4%, respectively. While the agricultural area increased from 178 km² in 1972 to 207 km² in 2000, it decreased to 195 km² in 2015 and would continue to decrease to 188 km² by 2050. The district-level analysis shows that from 2000–2015, the majority of districts exhibited an urban increase at twice the rate of 1990–2000. The results of the net change analysis of agriculture show that between 1990 and 2000, 9 districts exhibited a positive gain in agricultural land while the rest of the districts showed a negative loss of agricultural land. From 2000 to 2015, the four districts of Naser, Nozha, Rawdah, and Hashmyah completely lost their agricultural areas for urbanization. By 2050, Idoon and Boshra districts will likely lose more than half of their high-quality agricultural land. This study seeks to utilize a spatially explicit urban growth model to support sustainable planning policies for urban land use through forecasting. The implications from this study confirm the worldwide urbanization impacts on losing the most productive agricultural land in the outskirts and consequences on food production and food security. The study calls for urgent actions to adopt a compact growth policy with no new land added for development as what is available now exceeds what is needed by 2050 to accommodate urban growth in GIM.

中文翻译：

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利用SLEUTH（1972–2050）模拟约旦​​大厄尔比德市过去，现在和将来的城市增长对主要农业用地的影响

城市扩张和主要是农业用地的丧失是约旦面临的两个挑战。大厄尔比德市（GIM）位于约旦生产力最高的农业区，城市的不受控制的增长对维持其主要耕地和制定全面的规划战略都构成了巨大挑战。这项研究调查了1972年至2050年GIM的城市发展用农地流失，并指出了2001年合并过程对耕地流失的负面影响。目的是使用改良的SLEUTH-3r城市增长模型来揭示和跟踪历史土地使用/覆盖变化，并预测未来的变化。在2015年至2020年之间，对三个不同地点的预测结果的准确性进行了评估。在43年的时间里，建筑面积从29.2 km ²增加到从1972年的71 km ²增长到2015年的71 km ^2。到2050年，建成的城市面积将增加到107 km ²。但是，总体增长率在整个研究期内呈下降趋势，其中1990-2000年和2000-2015年的建成区扩张率最高，分别为68.6％和41.4％。农业面积从1972年的178 km ²增加到2000年的207 km ²，但到2015年减少到195 km ²，并将继续减少到188 km ²到2050年。地区层面的分析表明，从2000-2015年，大多数地区的城市增长速度是1990-2000年的两倍。农业净变化分析的结果表明，在1990年至2000年之间，有9个地区的农业用地增加了正数，而其余地区的农业用地则减少了。从2000年到2015年，纳赛尔（Naser），诺扎（Nozha），罗达（Raddah）和哈什米（Hashmyah）这四个地区完全失去了农业地区以实现城市化。到2050年，Idoon和Boshra地区将失去一半以上的优质农业用地。本研究旨在利用空间明确的城市增长模型，通过预测来支持城市土地利用的可持续规划政策。这项研究的意义证实了全球城市化对郊区失去生产力最高的农业用地的影响以及对粮食生产和粮食安全的影响。该研究呼吁采取紧急行动，采取紧凑型增长政策，不增加新土地用于发展，因为现在可用的土地超过了2050年为适应GIM中的城市增长所需要的土地。