A Regional Approach to Projecting Land-Use Change and Resulting Ecological Vulnerability

This study explores ecological vulnerability to land-use change in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Region by spatially extrapolating land and economic development, and overlaying these projections with maps of sensitive ecological resources. As individual extrapolations have a high degree of uncertainty, five methods with different theoretical bases are employed. Confidence in projections is increased for counties targeted by two or more projection methods. A county is considered at risk if it currently supports three or more sensitive resources, and is projected to experience significant growth by the year 2010 by two or more methods. Analysis designated 19 counties and two cities as at risk, highlighting within a large region the priority areas where state and regional efforts would contribute the most to integrating environmental considerations into the process of land development. The study also found that potentially severe ecological effects of future land-use change are not limited to the outskirts of major urban areas. Recreational demands on smaller communities with mountain and coastal resources are also significant, as are initiatives to promote economic development in rural areas of high ecological quality. This approach provides a comprehensive overview of potential regional development, leading to an objective prioritization of high-risk areas. The intent is to inform local planning and decision-making so that regional and cumulative ecological degradation are minimized.     

The Public Policy Aspects of Biological Monitoring: Budget and Land-Use Planning Implications at the County Level

Montgomery County, Maryland faces a growing problem that confronts local governments across the country: the cumulative impacts that population growth and the resulting land-use changes are having on local streams and their accompanying ecosystems. County officials found they needed an affordable tool to serve as a report card for stream health, and began a biomonitoring program in 1994. By 1997 county officials had monitored all 23 watersheds within the county's boundaries, and in 1998 the county published its first Countywide Stream Protection Strategy (CSPS). The County uses the CSPS to prioritize its watershed restoration efforts to those areas most in need of immediate remediation. Six primary programs now support or require the use of information from Montgomery County's biomonitoring program. And, the lessons learned from Montgomery County can help other county and local governments develop similar programs of their own.     

Changes Of Hydrological Environment And Their Influences On Coastal Wetlands InThe Southern Laizhou Bay, China

The structure and function of the coastal wetland ecosystem in the southern Laizhou Bay have been changed greatly and influenced by regional hydrological changes. The coastal wetlands have degraded significantly during the latest 30 years due to successive drought, decreasing of runoff, pollution, underground saline water intrusion, and aggravating marine disasters such as storm tides and sea level rising. Most archaic lakes have vanished, while artificial wetlands have been extending since natural coastal wetlands replaced by salt areas and ponds of shrimps and crabs. The pollution of sediments in inter-tidal wetlands and the pollution of water quality in sub-tidal wetlands are getting worse and therefore “red tides” happen more often than before. The biodiversity in the study area has been decreased. Further studies are still needed to protect the degraded coastal wetlands in the area.     

Impact of urbanization on natural ecosystem service values: a comparative study

With rapid population growth and rural to-urban migration in many Chinese cities, a large amount of natural lands have been converted to urban and agricultural lands recently. During this process of land conversion, economic development and quality of life improvement are considered as major goals, and their influences on ecological systems have often been neglected. The degradation of natural ecological systems due to land use change, however, has become severe,and may require immediate attentions from urban planners and local governments. Taking HaDaQi industrial corridor, Heilongjiang Province, China,as a case study area, this paper examined the trend of land use changes during 1990–2005, and quantified their influences on natural eco system service values. In particular, this study applied two major valuation methods, and examined whether different valuation methods generate significantly different results. Analysis of results suggests that human dominated land uses (e.g., urban and agriculture)have expanded rapidly at the cost of natural lands (e.g., wetlands and forest). Due to these land use changes, the total ecosystem service value decreased 29% (2.26% annually) from 1990 to 2005 when the first method was applied, and this rate is estimated to be 15.7% (1.13% annually)with the second approach. Moreover, the annual rate of ecosystem service value decline during 2000–2005 is about four times higher than that in 1990–2000 with both methods, suggesting much more severe ecosystem degradation during 2000–2005.     

Long-term monitoring for environmental change in U.S. National Parks a watershed approach

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is faced with direct questions about the condition of Park natural resources. The watershed approach to long-term monitoring of natural, and remote areas within the National Parks has provided important data for detecting both spacial and temporal changes in environmental conditions. These data collections allow the partitioning of cause and effect relationships of ecological change within a given watershed. They also serve to meet both reference and early warning objectives. Success in advancing a number of acid precipitation goals has demonstrated the usefulness of these integrated watershed data for inter-ecosystem comparison and for analogy between watersheds. The watershed program owing to the NPS experience is proposed as a model for focusing the National Park Service's inventory and monitoring program inititiative. This approach provides to park researchers and resources managers the needed tools for dealing with today's complex local, regional and global natural resources issues.     

Landscape as a predictor of wetland condition: an evaluation of the Landscape Development Index (LDI) with a large reference wetland dataset from Ohio

RecentAbstract. Recent approaches to wetland assessment have advocated a multilevel approach which incorporates assessments based on landscape (remote sensing) data, on-site but “rapid” methods, and intensive methods where quantitative data is collected. Brown and Vivas (2004) recently pro- posed an assessment method that uses remote sensing information (Landscape Development Index or LDI) and propose that it may also be usable as a quantified human disturbance gradient. The LDI was evaluated using a large reference wetland data set from Ohio using land use percentages within a 1 km radius circle of the wetlands. The LDI had interpretable and significant relationships with another human disturbance gradient (the Ohio Rapid Assessment Method for Wetlands or ORAM) and with most metrics and scores from the Vegetation Index of Biotic Integrity (VIBI) developed for use in the State of Ohio. Metrics from emergent wetlands had the most significant correlations with the LDI (10 of 10 metrics), followed by forested wetlands (8 of 10 metrics) and shrub wetlands (4 of 10). Poor correlation for VIBI scores and metrics of shrub wetlands was due to differences in attainable LDI scores based on ecoregion and natural buffers shielding the wetland from otherwise intensive land uses. The ORAM and VIBI were developed for use in wetlands in Ohio completely independent of the LDI. It is an important test of the LDI concept that so many interpretable and significant relationships occurred between the VIBI scores, VIBI metric values, and the ORAM scores. For the purposes of VIBI development, the LDI is an independent, quantified disturbance gradient that has provided an additional test of the VIBI. Given its theoretical underpinnings and the fact that it uses quantified land use percentages, the LDI has many advantages over more qualita- tive human disturbance gradients. Using land use percentages from increasingly smaller distances from the wetland edge (100-200 m) may improve the resolution of the LDI to detect on-site dis-turbances to a wetland which degrade its ecological condition. The LDI should be evaluated with other large reference data sets in other regions to evaluate its validity and usefulness as an assessment tool.     

Characteristics of nutrients in natural wetland in winter: a case study

The transformation, composition, and distribution characteristics of nutrients in natural wetlands are significantly affected by human activities, such as large-scale water conservancy projects and agricultural activities. It is necessary to reveal the composing and distribution characteristics of nutrients for elucidating its complex removal and retention mechanisms in natural wetlands. In this study, the composition and the spatial distribution characteristics of nitrogen in a natural wetland in central China were illustrated and analyzed. The self-organizing map (SOM) model was used in this study to assess the water quality dataset of the wetland. The relationships between nitrogen and other water quality parameters were revealed by the visualization function of the SOM model with the pre-processed data; the modeling result was in agreement with the linear correlation analysis. The results indicated that the SOM model was suitable for the assessment of field-scale date of natural wetlands, and finally a potential approach for predicting the nutrients concentrations in natural wetlands was also found.     

Industrial transformation towards sustainability of the energy system

Human induced climate change is one of the single most significant indicators that human society is not pursuing a sustainable trajectory. Managing the risks requires a major transformation of the way energy needs are met. Such a transformation includes changes in the production and consumption system and the incentive structure that shapes this system. The major driving force for transformation is the public concern about the environmental impact of the present fossil fuel based energy system. We may expect that energy producers, encouraged by governments, NGOs and consumer preferences will be responding to these concerns and expectations sooner or later. In fact a number of major international energy companies are presently adjusting their strategies to the needs and concerns of the public. A mix of measures including energy efficiency, a switch to natural gas, major investments in low carbon and renewable energy technologies and underground storage of carbon are elements of such new strategies. Consumers in a number of OECD countries have expressed their willingness to pay more for energy, provided it is green and clean. NGOs continue to put pressure on governments to deal with the climate problem. The challenge for governments is to develop an institutional framework that helps the producers and consumers to go through a transformation of the energy system. As different groups in society are likely to support different strategies, this paper suggests that a pluralistic policy approach including efficiency standards, renewable energy portfolio standards, carbon taxes, and the introduction of a system of tradable emission permits is the most promising approach for a transformation towards a low carbon energy economy. Research can support a transformation of the energy system by exploring the various transformation scenarios. Such research should take a multi-disciplinary approach, it should focus on the energy system as a whole, including production, consumption and the incentive structure that shapes the interaction between the two and it should be international in scope. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Natural resource protection on buffer lands: integrating resource evaluation and economics

Environmental managers are faced with the wise management, sustainability, and stewardship of their land for natural resource values. This task requires the integration of ecological evaluation with economics. Using the Department of Energy (DOE) as a case study, we examine the why, who, what, where, when, and how questions about assessment and natural resource protection of buffer lands. We suggest that managers evaluate natural resources for a variety of reasons that revolve around land use, remediation/restoration, protection of natural environments, and natural resource damage assessment (NRDA). While DOE is the manager of its lands, and thus its natural resources, a range of natural resource trustees and public officials have co-responsibility. We distinguish four types of natural resource evaluations: (1) the resources themselves (to the ecosystem), (2) the value of specific resources to people (e.g. hunting/fishing/bird-watching/herbal medicines), (3) the value of ecological resources to services for communities (e.g. clean air/water), and (4) the value of the intact ecosystems (e.g. forests or estuaries). Resource evaluations should occur initially to provide information about the status of those resources, and continued evaluation is required to provide trends data. Additional natural resource evaluation is required before, during and immediately following changes in land use, and remediation or restoration. Afterwards, additional monitoring and evaluations are required to evaluate the effects of the land use change or the efficacy of remediation/restoration. There are a wide range of economic methods available to evaluate natural resources, but the methods chosen depend upon the nature of the resource being evaluated, the purpose of the evaluation, and the needs of the agencies, natural resource trustees, public officials, and the public. We discuss the uses, and the advantages and disadvantages of different evaluation methods for natural resources.     

Characterizing wetland change at landscape scale in Jiangsu Province, China

Human activities produced great impacts on wetlands worldwide. Taking Jiangsu Province, China, as a representative wetland region subject to extensive human activities, the aim of this study is to understand the conversion trajectory and spatial differentiation in wetland change from a multi-scale perspective. Based on multi-temporal Landsat images, it was found that the natural wetlands decreased by 11.2% from 1990 to 2006 in Jiangsu Province. Transition matrices showed that the conversion of natural wetlands to human-made wetlands (mostly aquaculture ponds) was the major form of natural wetland reduction, accounting for over 60% of the reduction. Percentage reduction and area reduc tion of natural wetlands were respectively quantified within different wetland cover zones using a moving window analysis. Average percentage reduction showed a decreasing tendency with increasing wetland cover. The high-cover and mid-cover zone presented the largest area reduction at the scales of 1-2 km and 4-8 km, respectively. Local hotspots of natural wetland reduction were mapped using the equal-interval and quantile classification schemes. The hotspots were mostly concentrated in the Lixiahe marshes and the coastal wetland areas. For the area reduction hotspots, the quantile classification presented larger area and more patches than the equal-interval classification; while an opposite result was shown for the percentage reduction hotspots. With respect to the discontinuous distribution of the natural wetlands, area reduction could be more appropriate to represent reduction hotspots than percentage reduction in the study area. These findings could have useful implications to wetland conservation.     

The potential of remote sensing for monitoring land cover changes and effects on physical geography in the area of Kayisdagi Mountain and its surroundings (Istanbul)

The effect of land cover change, from natural to anthropogenic, on physical geography conditions has been studied in Kayisdagi Mountain. Land degradation is the most important environmental issue involved in this study. Most forms of land degradation are natural processes accelerated by human activity. Land degradation is a human induced or natural process that negatively affects the ability of land to function effectively within an ecosystem. Environmental degradation from human pressure and land use has become a major problem in the study area because of high population growth, urbanization rate, and the associated rapid depletion of natural resources. When studying the cost of land degradation, it is not possible to ignore the role of urbanization. In particular, a major cause of deforestation is conversion to urban land. The paper reviews the principles of current remote sensing techniques considered particularly suitable for monitoring Kayisdagi Mountain and its surrounding land cover changes and their effects on physical geography conditions. In addition, this paper addresses the problem of how spatially explicit information about degradation processes in the study area rangelands can be derived from different time series of satellite data. The monitoring approach comprises the time period between 1990 and 2005. Satellite remote sensing techniques have proven to be cost effective in widespread land cover changes. Physical geography and particularly natural geomorphologic processes like erosion, mass movement, physical weathering, and chemical weathering features etc. have faced significant unnatural variation.     

日本水环境质量监测管理概述

伴随着日本经济的高速发展,其水环境污染问题十分严峻,防治水污染成为日本政府在20—21世纪的重要工作之一。经过几十年的努力,日本水污染治理取得长足进展。目前日本水环境监测已经形成由水和土壤等方面组成的水循环监测体系,包括地表水、近海、湖泊、地下水和土壤等。在日本的重要环保法律法规中均有涉及水环境监测工作内容的明确法律条文,国家行政机关、地方政府和公立的科研单位在具体实施水环境质量监测过程中的职责和义务不同,水环境质量监测管理的国家行政机关以环境省为主,地方政府根据环境省制定的水环境质量标准、监测技术方法及规范,制定所辖地域的监测方案并实施监测,公立的环境科研机构在环境质量监测工作中起到重要的支撑作用。笔者概述了日本开展水环境质量监测的法律依据和监测管理情况等。     

Using two classification schemes to develop vegetation indices of biological integrity for wetlands in West Virginia, USA

Bioassessment methods for wetlands, and other bodies of water, have been developed worldwide to measure and quantify changes in “biological integrity.” These assessments are based on a classification system, meant to ensure appropriate comparisons between wetland types. Using a local site-specific disturbance gradient, we built vegetation indices of biological integrity (Veg-IBIs) based on two commonly used wetland classification systems in the USA: One based on vegetative structure and the other based on a wetland’s position in a landscape and sources of water. The resulting class-specific Veg-IBIs were comprised of 1–5 metrics that varied in their sensitivity to the disturbance gradient (R ²?=?0.14???0.65). Moreover, the sensitivity to the disturbance gradient increased as metrics from each of the two classification schemes were combined (added). Using this information to monitor natural and created wetlands will help natural resource managers track changes in biological integrity of wetlands in response to anthropogenic disturbance and allows the use of vegetative communities to set ecological performance standards for mitigation banks.     

Suggestions for integrating EIA and economic development in the Caribbean region

Conflicts between economic development and fragile natural resources represent a growing problem among the islands of the Caribbean. Relatively simple methods exist to incorporate environmental impact assessment (EIA) into development planning and review. These methods can save scarce financial resources for island nations, increase their control over the development process, and possibly forestall widespread environmental deterioration and its attendant public cost. Island nations have more power as negotiating partners in the development process than is generally realized. This power can be exercised if EIA is integrated into the national planning process, giving ministries a stronger bargaining position when negotiating with development interests.This paper begins with a discussion of the most prevalent environmental concerns in the region, including oil development, water supply, beach erosion and fisheries depletion, and proceeds to discuss practical solutions to improve local control over economic development and environmental resource management. A hypothetical case study is used to illustrate major obstacles to effective integration of economic development and EIA. Recommendations are included to advance the state-of-the-art of EIA using joint fact-finding, expanding participation in EIA, evaluating cumulative impacts and project alternatives, and conducting post-projecting monitoring.     

Measuring the spatial impacts of urbanization on the surface water resource basins in Istanbul via remote sensing

Istanbul is one of the largest metropolitan cities in the World. The city has experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization in the second half of the twentieth century. Between 1950 and 2000, the city has grown by an average of 4.5% annually. Given the scale of the growth, neither local nor the central governments have shown capability of controlling the influx of migration, most of which settled illegally on public lands. Most of the settlements lack the basic sewerage facilities, and a significant portion of which are on the major water resource basins. As of today, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) not only has to cope with the infrastructure problems, but also has to find ways of solving the problem of illegal occupations of public lands and water resource basins. This paper presents the land use changes in the water resource basins providing water to the Istanbul Metropolitan Area. Using four consecutive Landsat images between 1990 and 2005, the changes in 12 different land use categories are obtained via overlay operations by GIS for water resource basins surrounding the City of Istanbul. It has been observed that the most critical land use changes are in the nearest basins to the city. The capability of Landsat and IKONOS images in determining the alterations in the macro form of the city are also discussed. Finally, possibility of utilization of new technologies in policy making regarding environmental management in Istanbul is discussed.     

Evaluating Quality of Life, Economic Vulnerabilities, and Drivers of Ecosystem Change

We examined regional conditions and trends related to quality of life and potential vulnerabilities of these factors to changes in the condition of natural resources in the Mid-Atlantic Region, USA. We selected a variety of variables on economic and socio-demographic conditions that demonstrate links between the condition of natural areas and human concerns and that quantify dependencies on resources. We extracted data from economic and population census databases for counties within the study area and present a subset of results of the cluster analyses used to describe condition and potential risks due to distinct combinations of variables. We found that the same variables used to judge quality of life were often correlated with increasing population and thus were likely to be related to land pressures and risks to natural resources. Within the region, economic dependence on resource-harvesting industries such as forestry and fisheries was low (less than 4% of total earnings at most), however, the potential for natural amenities to attract residents appeared to be growing as the self-employed and otherwise mobile people settled in areas with affordable housing and natural amenities. Suburban residential spread had been occurring in both the close-in and distant suburbs of the region's urban areas and some rural, growth appeared to be driven, in part, by businesses migrating to suburbs. Further work is needed to tease apart causal factors for the trends we observed, but correlations clearly existed in some areas between increasing populations and quality of natural surroundings.     

The landscape pattern characteristics of coastal wetlands in Jiaozhou Bay Under The Impact Of Human Activities

In this study, we interpreted coastal wetland types from an ASTER satellite image in 2002, and then compared the results with the land-use status of coastal wetlands in 1952 to determine the wetland loss and degradation around Jiaozhou Bay. Seven types of wetland landscape were classified, namely: shallow open water, inter-tidal flats, estuarine water, brackish marshes, salt ponds, fishery ponds and ports. Several landscape pattern indices were analysed: the results indicate that the coastal wetlands have been seriously degraded. More and more natural wetlands have been transformed into artificial wetlands, which covered about 33.7% of the total wetlands in 2002. In addition, we used a defined model to assess the impacts of human activities on coastal wetlands. The results obtained show that the coastal wetlands of Jiaozhou Bay have suffered severe human disturbance. Effective coastal management and control is therefore needed to solve the issues of the coastal wetland loss and degradation existing in this area.     

Community Production Practices and Desertification in the Sahelo-Sudanian Region of Cameroon at the Turn of the Millennium

The Sahelo-Sudanian region of Cameroon extends over 10 million hectares. Varied flora and soil types, a complex mosaic of vegetation and plant communities and a diversified wild animal population are the major natural resources of this region. Desertification in the region can be related to two major known causes: a. short or long-term drought due to short-term or long-term climatic trends toward aridity; b. human activities which degrade the biological environment. Globally, humans generally have less effect on desertification than climatic change in the short run. The only strategy to fight against this situation particularly in the developing countries is to withdraw populations from the areas and to settle them elsewhere. However, most local or regional desertification processes in general, and in the Sahelo-Sudanian region in particular, are due to the misuse or unsound exploitation of natural resources by humans and their animals. Often, comprehension of the complexity of even small interactions between parameters affecting our local environment remains limited. Poor economic assessments of the long-term benefits of proper natural resource conservation and management increase the extent of the exploitation, in turn increasing the degradation process. Yet ecologically sound management of natural resources integrating indigenous knowledge and basic population interest and concern can secure restoration in several areas and sustained productivity of Sahelo-Sudanian lands.     

Mercury concentrations in oligohaline wetland vegetation and associated soil biogeochemistry

Concentrations of mercury were determined in above- and below-ground tissues of dominant plant species, as well as soils, in the wetlands of Lake Maurepas, Louisiana. Indicators of wetland soil biogeochemical status, such as soil redox potential, pore-water nutrient concentrations, and pore-water total sulfides, were also determined. Total mercury concentrations in plant tissues were within the typical range for vegetation not exposed to mercury contamination. Similarly, total mercury concentrations in soils were typical of uncontaminated wetlands within this geographic region. Soil methyl mercury levels in this study are slightly lower than those reported in other studies of nearby wetlands. This may reflect the less extensive geographic sampling in this study, or the low water levels in the Lake Maurepas system immediately prior to and during this study, which would have altered soil biogeochemical status. This is corroborated by measurements of soil redox potential and soil pore-water nitrogen and sulfur constituents conducted during this study that suggest minimal sulfate reduction was occurring in surficial soils. This study indicates that the wetlands surrounding Lake Maurepas are typical of many uncontaminated oligohaline wetlands in the southeastern U.S. in regard to mercury concentrations.     

Analysis of the spatio-temporal and semantic aspects of land-cover/use change dynamics 1991–2001 in Albania at national and district levels

In the turmoil of a rapidly changing economy the Albanian government needs accurate and timely information for management of their natural resources and formulation of land-use policies. The transformation of the forestry sector has required major changes in the legal, regulatory and management framework. The World Bank financed Albanian National Forest Inventory project provides an analysis of spatially explicit land-cover/use change dynamics in the period 1991–2001 using the FAO/UNEP Land Cover Classification System for codification of classes, satellite remote sensing and field survey for data collection and elements of the object-oriented geo-database approach to handle changes as an evolution of land-cover/use objects, i.e. polygons, over time to facilitate change dynamics analysis.Analysis results at national level show the trend of natural resources depletion in the form of modifications and conversions that lead to a gradual shift from land-cover/use types with a tree cover to less dense tree covers or even a complete removal of trees. Policy failure (e.g., corruption, lack of law enforcement) is seen as the underlying cause. Another major trend is urbanisation of areas near large urban centres that change urban-rural linkages. Furthermore, after privatisation agricultural areas increased in the hills where environmental effects may be detrimental, while prime agricultural land in the plains is lost to urbanisation.At district level, the local variability of spatially explicit land-cover/use changes shows different types of natural resources depletion. The distribution of changes indicates a regional prevalence, thus a decentralised approach to the natural resources management could be advocated.