Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Urban development versus wetland loss in a coastal Latin American city: Lessons for sustainable land use planning Carolina Rojas a, ⁎ , Juan Munizaga b , Octavio Rojas c , Carolina Martínez d , Joan Pino e a Departamento de Geografía, Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Geografía, Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable CEDEUS, Universidad de Concepción, Chile b Departamento de Geografía, Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Geografía, Universidad de Concepción, Chile c Departamento de Planificación Territorial, Facultad de Ciencias Ambientales-Centro EULA, Universidad de Concepción, Chile d Instituto de Geografía, Facultad de Historia, Geografía y Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile e CREAF Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: SEA Urban planning Coastal wetland Land use change Flooding Metropolitan area ABSTRACT Urbanization is a primary cause of wetland loss in coastal metropolitan regions. Therefore, it challenges the preservation of biodiversity and the provision of key ecosystem services for urban settlements. These services include leisure and recreation, climate and water regulation, water purification, and especially alleviation of natural hazards. Tsunami flood mitigation is a particularly valuable regulating service provided by these wet- lands, as recently evidenced during the 2010 tsunami that hit the central coast of Chile. The Concepción Metropolitan Area (CMA), located on the central coast of Chile, has experienced noticeable wetland loss in recent decades. Our study focused on the Rocuant-Andalién wetland, which has been particularly affected by urbanization. This wetland strongly contributes to flood control, and has provided effective pro- tection against the CMA’s latest tsunamis (1835 and 2010). Based on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), we have quantified urban growth over the wetland, both executed and projected under the Metropolitan Urban Plan of Concepción (MUPC). Recent loss in wetland area by urban growth has been quantified using land use and cover change (LUCC) maps from 2004 to 2014, obtained from the classification of Landsat images. Prospective changes (considering the complete MUPC deployment) have been inferred by combining the MUPC with the 2014 land cover map. In addition, we quantified the observed effect and planned urban growth on the wetland protected area, geoforms and potential flooding based on the area affected by the last Tsunami. Results show that urban areas have increased by 28% between 2004 and 2014, while future increase is expected to reach 238%. In contrast, wetland area has decreased by 10% from 2004 to 2014 and is expected to decrease by up to 32 %. Thus, the MUPC is not contributing to the mitigation of wetland loss nor the preservation of its biodiversity and ecosystem services. Implications for coastal planning are discussed. 1. Introduction Land use changes, especially urbanization, drainage and crop ex- pansion, have become a primary cause of coastal wetland loss (Boyer and Polasky, 2004; Faulkner, 2004; Bishop et al., 2006; González et al., 2018). Therefore, coastal wetlands are increasingly threatened (Doody, 2004; CDB, 2012; Pontee, 2013), suffering general losses in range, ecological integrity, and service provision (Martins et al., 2012; Seto et al., 2013). Indeed, at least 50% of wetlands worldwide have been lost (Davidson, 2014), particularly in highly pressured areas such as the Mediterranean (Bouahim et al., 2015; Perennou et al., 2012; Zorrilla- Miras et al., 2014), the Gulf of Mexico (Turner, 1997), California (Mitsch and Gosselink, 2015), coastal Brazil (Sousa et al., 2011; Wittmann et al., 2015) and Argentina (Pintos and Sgroi, 2012). Coastal wetland loss is largely quantified in developed countries. For example, losses of more than 50% and 80% have been reported in California and in the Midwestern US States, respectively (Mitsch and Gosselink, 2015; Boyer and Polasky, 2004). Similarly, significant losses seem to occur especially fast in emerging countries, yet data for these regions is scarce (see Mitsch and Gosselink, 2015). Wetland loss in urban settings is especially worrisome, as they provide many ecosystem services of great importance for human well- being (Warner and Rubec, 1997; Neiff, 2000; MEA, 2005; Iniesta et al., 2014; Andersson et al., 2015). These include water regulation and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.09.036 Received 15 December 2017; Received in revised form 26 September 2018; Accepted 26 September 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: crojasq@udec.cl (C. Rojas), juanmunizaga@udec.cl (J. Munizaga), ocrojas@udec.cl (O. Rojas), camartinezr@uc.cl (C. Martínez), joan.pino@uab.cat (J. Pino). Land Use Policy 80 (2019) 47–56 0264-8377/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T