@article{d4bff2e997c24f7aa4c2b299647e9990,
title = "Globally Universal Fractal Pattern of Human Settlements in River Networks",
abstract = "River networks play a key role in the spatial organization of human settlements. Both river networks and human settlements have been found to exhibit regular self-similar patterns, but little is known about the generalized spatial patterns of human settlements embedded within river networks. Here based on night light data, we find a universal fractal structure at the global scale, with both robust Hortonian scaling relationships with the extent of human settlements and statistically significant power law scaling of the power spectra of human area functions. Globally, we find consistent patterns of power law preferential downstream clustering of human settlements across all six populated continents, typically up to 40% of the maximum flow length. This downstream clustering suggests an optimum distribution of humans in large river basins for trade, transport, and natural resource utilization but with attendant implications for human impacts on rivers. Recognition of such spatial patterns helps generalize assessments of human impacts on rivers, with direct implications for management of water quality and biological diversity in river networks.",
keywords = "cities, power law, river basins",
author = "Yu Fang and Serena Ceola and Kyungrock Paik and Gavan McGrath and Rao, {P. Suresh C.} and Alberto Montanari and Jawitz, {James W.}",
note = "Funding Information: The authors thank the organizers and attendees of the following workshops for fruitful discussions and exchange of ideas: Synthesis Workshop on Dynamics of Structure and Functions of Complex Networks held 29 June to 16 July 2015 at Korea University, South Korea, Synthesis 1.9 Workshop on Complexity & Feedbacks held 21–25 March 2016 at Purdue University, USA, and Synthesis 2 Workshop on From Dynamics of Structure to Functions of Complex Networks held 8–19 August 2016 at Technische Universit{\"a}t Dresden, Germany. We also thank JongChun Kim for providing initial assistance with subbasin boundary extraction. S. C. and A. M. acknowledge the support of SWITCH-ON project, funded from the European Union{\textquoteright}s Seventh Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement 603587. K. P. was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (grant number 2018R1A2A2B2005772). Y. F. and J. W. J. were supported in part by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch project FLA-SWS-005461. Funding Information: The authors thank the organizers and attendees of the following workshops for fruitful discussions and exchange of ideas: Synthesis Workshop on Dynamics of Structure and Functions of Complex Networks held 29 June to 16 July 2015 at Korea University, South Korea, Synthesis 1.9 Workshop on Complexity & Feedbacks held 21?25 March 2016 at Purdue University, USA, and Synthesis 2 Workshop on From Dynamics of Structure to Functions of Complex Networks held 8?19 August 2016 at Technische Universit?t Dresden, Germany. We also thank JongChun Kim for providing initial assistance with subbasin boundary extraction. S.?C. and A.?M. acknowledge the support of SWITCH-ON project, funded from the European Union's Seventh Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement 603587. K.?P. was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (grant number 2018R1A2A2B2005772). Y.?F. and J.?W.?J. were supported in part by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch project FLA-SWS-005461. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright}2018. The Authors.",
year = "2018",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1029/2017EF000746",
language = "English",
volume = "6",
pages = "1134--1145",
journal = "Earth's Future",
issn = "2328-4277",
publisher = "John Wiley and Sons Inc.",
number = "8",
}