Impacts of past and future land changes on landslides in southern Italy

Regional Environmental Change - Land use and land cover (LULC), as well as their geographical and temporal variations, affect landslide occurrence and the related risk, in ways that are difficult...     

Current practices and challenges for modelling past and future land use and land cover changes in mountainous regions

Regional Environmental Change -     

Landscape changes and environmental quality: the evolution of land vulnerability and potential resilience to degradation in Italy

Resilience, considered as the ability of a system to absorb and compensate pressures derived from human and natural systems, is a topic of interest in the Mediterranean region whose landscape is the joint result of social, economic and environmental factors. The present study analyses the changes in the Italian landscape over two periods (1960–1990 and 1990–2010) of the last 50 years through a composite index of environmental resilience and vulnerability to land degradation. Results indicate that the spatial distribution of this index has been considerably changed from a relatively simple geography (mainly reflecting a latitude gradient) to a more complex pattern. The level of vulnerability of southern Italian land maintained quite stable while increasing significantly in Northern and Central Italy. The (potential) resilience level decreased over time in Central and Northern Italy while growing moderately in Southern Italy. This means that important processes of environmental changes impacting landscape resilience occurred with a different spatial trend in Italy. The composite index derived from vulnerability and potential resilience estimates at the regional scale revealed crucial to map over time the increase of surface land exposed to desertification risk. Results support the adoption of measures promoting a sustainable land management in environmentally vulnerable land with low potential to resilience.     

Examination of land use/land cover changes,urban growth dynamics,and environmental sustainability in Chittagong city,Bangladesh

As in many other developing countries, cities in Bangladesh have witnessed rapid urbanization, resulting in increasing amounts of land being taken over and therefore land cover changing at a faster rate. Until now, however, few efforts have been made to document the impact of land use and land cover changes on the climate, environment, and ecosystem of the country because of a lack of geospatial data and time-series information. By using open source Landsat data integrated with GIS technologies and other ancillary data, this study attempts to classify land use and create land cover maps, enabling post-classification change detection analysis. By this method, we document the spatial and temporal trajectory of urban expansion in Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh, over a 36-year period. The findings suggest that, over the study period, 56 % of the land cover has undergone change, mainly because of the expansion of built-up areas and other human activities. During the 36-year period, the built-up area around Chittagong city has expanded by 618 %, with an average annual rate of increase of 17.5 %. As a result of rapid urbanization, the vegetated hills near urban development areas face serious threats of further encroachment and degradation, given that 2178 ha of hills have already been intruded over the study period. Because urbanization processes in Bangladesh have traditionally been viewed as the result of population growth and economic development, very little work has been done to track the potential growth trajectory in a physical or spatial context. This study, therefore, will contribute to the current understanding of urban development in Bangladesh from a temporal and spatial point of view. Findings will be able to assist planners, stakeholders, and policy makers in appreciating the dynamism of urban growth and therefore will facilitate better planning for the future to minimize environmental impacts.     

Socioeconomic development and vulnerability to land degradation in Italy

In recent years, the surface area affected by land degradation (LD) has significantly increased in southern European regions where the socioeconomic development has been proposed as a basic factor underlying the degree of vulnerability to LD. This paper investigates the correlation between several socioeconomic indicators and the level of vulnerability to LD in Italy, expressed as changes (1990–2000) in a composite index of land vulnerability (ΔLVI). The analysis was carried out over 784 local districts. The impact of per capita value added, agricultural intensity, industrial and tourism concentration, and urban growth was separately tested on ΔLVI. Results indicate that a lower district value added, crop intensification, irrigation, and the level of land vulnerability to degradation are strongly associated with the increasing level of land vulnerability over time, highlighting the role of the socioeconomic development as a main process underlying LD. In this framework, spatially equitable sustainable development may represent the effective strategy to mitigate the detrimental effects of economic growth and regional disparities on Mediterranean LD.     

Quantification of land use/land cover changes in Pearl River Delta and its impact on regional climate in summer using numerical modeling

This study quantified land use/land cover (LULC) changes in Pearl River Delta (PRD) of South China and its impact on regional climate over the last two decades. The LULC change analyses were accomplished by applying a change detection method to a set of Landsat imagery and ancillary data acquired from 1970s to 2000. The results indicate that the urban expansion is the prevailing LULC change in the PRD. Impact of LULC change on regional climate was simulated by using a mesoscale climate model. Two different land cover datasets circa 1990 and 2000 were input to the model to investigate the impact of urbanization on regional weather and climate condition in summer 2005. The simulation results show that rapid urban expansion can substantially alter regional climate conditions in the PRD region including monthly mean temperature, precipitation, moisture, and surface heat fluxes.     

Fine-grain spatial patterning and dynamics of land use and agrobiodiversity amid global changes in the Bolivian Andes

Our research addresses the gap in scientific research on the fine-grain spatial patterns and social–ecological interactions of land use and agrobiodiversity. The spatial dimension of agrobiodiversity dynamics potentially strengthens the social–ecological resilience and food security of smallholders by buffering risk and vulnerability. Our research integrates the scientific theories, concepts, and methods of spatial externalities, social–ecological interactions, geospatial land and global change sciences, and political ecology. We designed a case study of the Arbieto-Tarata landscape in the Bolivian Andes that comprises a globally significant agrobiodiversity hot spot of Andean maize. The Arbieto-Tarata landscape, which contains nearly 8000 fields at 2500–2800 masl, is representative of mixed-use smallholder agri-food systems amid global changes. Our research predicts spatial spillover and edge effects of combined social and environmental factors leading to the clustering of same-crop fields. Findings reveal significant levels of the predicted clustering between 2006 and 2012. The degree of this clustering is found to differ among geographic and environmental sub-areas reflecting fine-grain variation of local causal linkages. Extra-local causal linkages include high levels of migration, water resource shortages, and urbanization. Results show the influences of informal and formal coordination in the spatial clustering of same-crop fields. This field-level coordination improves the efficiency of resource allocations and lowers costs of production. It enables the viability of high-agrobiodiversity Andean maize in smallholder land use and agri-food systems amid global changes. The article discusses the broader policy and scientific implications of these findings including scaling up and support of the social–ecological resilience of agrobiodiversity globally.     

Erratum to: Quantification of land use/land cover changes in Pearl River Delta and its impact on regional climate in summer using numerical modeling

Regional Environmental Change -     

Social network ties predict land use diversity and land use change: a case study in Ghana

Regional Environmental Change - While it is well documented that informal social ties play a role in information exchange on land management practices, the structural features of such networks that...     

Representing large-scale land acquisitions in land use change scenarios for the Lao PDR

Regional Environmental Change - Agricultural large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) is a process that is currently not captured by land change models. We present a novel land change modeling approach...     

Downscaling scenarios of future land use and land cover changes using a participatory approach: an application to mountain risk assessment in the Pyrenees (France)

Regional Environmental Change - Better understanding the pathways through which future socioeconomic changes might influence land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) is a crucial step in accurately...     

Towards a roadmap for sustainable land use in Europe

Regional Environmental Change -     

Land use/land cover change and statistical modelling of cultivated land change drivers in Nigeria

Regional Environmental Change - In recent decades, human activities have significantly influenced land use/land cover. Identifying pattern changes in regional land use/land cover and their drivers...     

Identifying pathways to visions of future land use in Europe

Regional Environmental Change - Plausible scenarios of future land use derived from model projections may differ substantially from what is actually desired by society, and identifying such...     

Agricultural land use efficiency and food crop production in Ghana

Despite the low productivity of the extensive agriculture system, Ghana recorded the largest reduction of undernourishment in the past two decades. We used biophysical analysis to determine the efficiency and potentials of the extensive system and its future sustainability. The results indicate that food production in Ghana has increased steadily over the past two decades and correlated highly with cropped area and population (R ² < 0.85 and 0.82), but not with fertilizer (R ² = 0.06). Sufficient food production could be sustained in the short term. In the longer term, however, the food situation in Ghana appears precarious if population growth continues while land remains the same.     

Recognizing loss of open forest ecosystems by tree densification and land use intensification in the Midwestern USA

Regional Environmental Change - Forests and grasslands have changed during the past 200&nbsp;years in the eastern USA, and it is now possible to quantify loss and conversion of vegetation cover...     

Dynamics of land use land cover and its impact on carbon stocks in Sub-Saharan Africa: an overview

Environment, Development and Sustainability - Land use land cover change (LULCC) is a global environmental trend that plays a key role in worldwide environmental change and sustainable development....     

Impacts of future land use/land cover on wildfire occurrence in the Madrid region (Spain)

This paper assesses the relative importance of socioeconomic factors linked to fire occurrence through the simulation of future land use/land cover (LULC) change scenarios in the Madrid region (Spain). This region is a clear example of the socioeconomic changes that have been occurring over recent decades in the European Mediterranean as well as their impact on LULC and fire occurrence. Using the LULC changes observed between 1990 and 2006 as a reference, future scenarios were run up to 2025 with the conversion of land use and its effects model. Simultaneously, the relationship between LULC arrangement (interfaces) and historical fire occurrence was calculated using logistic regression analysis and used to quantify changes in future fire occurrence due to projected changes in LULC interfaces. The results revealed that it is possible to explain the probability of fire occurrence using only variables obtained from LULC maps, although the explanatory power of the model is low. In this context, border areas between some LULC types are of particular interest (i.e., urban/forest, grassland/forest and agricultural/forest interfaces). Results indicated that expected LULC changes in Euro-Mediterranean regions, particularly given the foreseeable increase in the wildland–urban interface, will substantially increase fire occurrence (up to 155 %). This underlines the importance of future LULC scenarios when planning fire prevention measures.     

Evaluation of temporal dynamics of land use and land surface temperature (LST) in Agartala city of India

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The study has been conducted at Agartala Municipal area (AMA) of Tripura, which exhibits rapid population growth and faster land use land cover...