城市湖泊地区的土地利用变化--以武汉东湖为例

利用1986、1993、1999年的Landsat TM卫星遥感影像和1981年地形图,借助GIS技术分析了城市湖泊地区—武汉东湖流域1987～1999间土地利用的时空变化及景观结构的变化。土地利用分为水体、针叶林、阔叶林、灌草、裸地、农业用地和城镇用地七种类型。各时期遥感影像分类精度都在85%以上。该流域土地利用变化以城镇大幅度扩展（从占全流域面积的9.1％到29.6％）、农业用地增加(从7.0％到13.9％)和由此引起的林地（从占全流域面积的33.6％到24.3％）、水体（从30.4％到23.8％）面积减少为主要特征。同时流域整体的景观多样性下降、优势度提高,但不同景观组分的碎裂化程度的变化趋势不同。其中,城镇用地等优势景观组分的分布趋于聚集,其他类型多趋于碎裂化。流域的城市化具有方向性。城市的快速扩展对林地、灌草、水体等城市湖泊地区的自然生态系统产生显著影响。流域的土地利用及变化受多种自然、社会因素影响。     

Reaching a forest land per capita milestone in the United States

During April 2007, forest land per capita in the United States dropped below 1 ha. This is the result of a rather static area of forest land in the United States for the past 100 years combined with population growth. The US now joins the ranks of most countries (77%) having forest land per capita below 1 ha. The combination of an increasing human population with stable or increasing per capita natural resource utilization may place even more demand on resources derived from forest land in the future. The forest land per capita should be expected to continue its downward trend unless substantive demographic, resource utilization, and land-use changes occur.     

What Drives Accelerated Land Cover Change in Central Argentina? Synergistic Consequences of Climatic,Socioeconomic, and Technological Factors

Synergistic combinations of climatic and land use changes have the potential to produce the most dramatic impacts on land cover. Although this is widely accepted, empirical examples, particularly involving deforestation in Latin America, are still very few. The geographic extent and causes of deforestation in subtropical seasonally dry forests of the world have received very little attention. This is especially true for the Chaco forests in South America, which are being lost at an alarming rate, sometimes higher than those reported for tropical forests. On this basis, the aims of this study were to analyze the changes in land cover that have occurred during the last three decades of the 20th century in the Chaco forests of central Argentina, and to explain the factors that have driven those changes. Results show major land cover changes. Approximately 80% of the area that was originally undisturbed forest is now occupied by crops, pastures, and secondary scrub. The main proximate cause of deforestation has been agricultural expansion, soybean cultivation in particular. This appears as the result of the synergistic convergence of climatic, technological, and socioeconomic factors, supporting the hypothesis of a multiple-factor explanation for forest loss, while providing one of the very few existing analyses of changes in subtropical forests of the world.     

Population collapses in the pre-modern period: case study of the Fuping County,Northwest China

The pre-modern history of population change in the Fuping County (Shaanxi Province, China) during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (AD 1368–1911) was reconstructed using historical sources. The Fuping County experienced two major population collapses, i.e. the late Ming Dynasty (1550–1640s) and the 1860–1880s. The first one was caused by the great AD 1556 earthquake and the extreme droughts and warfare in the 1630–1640s. The second one was caused by warfare and extreme droughts. As a whole, natural disasters, including extreme drought and great earthquake, were the key direct causes of population collapse, and climatic cooling would be a potential indirect cause. It is very interesting that population collapses occurred almost synchronously in the Fuping County and whole China, and the trends of population change were also very similar. Climate–population relationship in China would be valid at finer geographic level, and climatic cooling could be a potential indirect cause of population collapse.     

桥梁-道路建设对西南山地城市扩展影响机制研究——以重庆嘉陵江两桥为例

交通因素对城市空间扩展的影响是一个研究热点,但国内外关于桥梁-道路建设对山地城市扩展影响机制的研究还不多见。基于桥梁-道路对城市待开发区域区位的影响,提出了点状辐射、线状辐射和环状辐射3种影响机制。以重庆嘉陵江大桥和黄花园大桥建设对嘉陵江北岸影响为例,将研究区划分为5个分区,基于Arc GIS软件提取各分区城市建成区与河岸的空间分布关系,并通过5个分区1940~2009年城市扩展差异比较印证3种影响机制。研究结果表明,桥梁和道路建设促进研究区建成区迅速扩张,但对不同分区的建成区扩展速度的影响有差异;第3分区城市扩展反映了桥梁-道路对城市扩展的点状辐射和线状辐射,而第4分区城市扩展反映了桥梁-道路对城市扩展的环状辐射。结论表明研究提出的点状辐射、线状辐射和环状辐射符合桥梁-道路建设对西南山地城市扩展的影响机制。     

Coupling a settlement growth model with an agro-economic land allocation model for securing ecosystem services provision

Mountain landscapes are undergoing rapid land-use changes. Settlement expansion, the intensification of agricultural land-use practices, and farmland abandonment result in a decline of natural and semi-natural habitats and the related ecosystem services (ES). In this context, spatial planning has emerged as a key instrument for the management of ES provision. To better understand trade-offs and interactions between settlement growth and ES provision in a spatially explicit manner, we present a new modeling framework coupling an agent-based, agro-economic optimization model and a cellular-automata-based settlement growth model. The framework is applied in an inner alpine valley in the Valais, Switzerland, which experienced rapid settlement growth in recent years. Results demonstrate how the model framework allows support of local planning processes. Particularly cooperation among municipalities and an explicit consideration of ES can inform spatially explicit ES trade-off decisions under increasing demand for land. We conclude that better informed spatial planning processes support ES provision.     

基于RS和GIS技术的重庆市主城区扩展分析

采用重庆市主城区2000年和2010年两个时相的TM影像提取城市扩展信息,对影像数据的归一化建筑指数（NDBI）、归一化植被指数（NDVI）和归一化水体指数（NDWI）进行RGB组合增强,再进行决策树分类和减法运算获取研究区扩展信息,发现建筑区面积增加了1.62倍,大部分是由植被区转变而来。其扩张方向受地理影响,南北方向为外延型,东西方向为飞地型。借助统计资料进行精度验证和城市扩展的驱动因素分析发现,区域发展政策、经济增长和人口扩张是主要的影响因素,探讨了对经济增长、城市扩张和人口增长的关系。研究结果表明,以遥感手段监测与研究城市发展变化的趋势是可行和高效的。     

The safety effect of open-median management on one-side widened freeways: A driving simulation evaluation

Introduction: Highway expansions and upgrades are often required to increase road network capacity. The widening of one side of a highway, referred to as ‘one-side widening,’ is sometimes implemented in these highway expansion projects. During one-side widening, to save costs, openings can be configured on existing medians (as opposed to removing the existing medians altogether). The median openings allow vehicles in the outer lanes to enter the inner lanes, but they also raise safety concerns and may require alternate open-median management strategies for traffic authorities. There is little existing research that has evaluated the safety effect of these open-median management strategies. Method: To bridge this gap, this study proposes a procedure that evaluates the safety of open-median management strategies for one-side widened highways. The proposed procedure was implemented through driving simulation experiments on a section of Binlai Freeway in Shandong, China. First, the minimum location requirements for median openings were determined by calculating the short length of the weaving segment. Then, simulation tests were carried out to observe driving performance and workload measures. Results: The results indicate that the procedure successfully evaluates the safety effect of open-median management strategies for one-side widened freeways. It was also found that driving performance and workload are sensitive to the opening length and traffic flow. Conclusions: Therefore, median opening placement should be carefully selected in consideration of not only driving performance and workload but also traffic volume predictions. Practical Applications: The findings in this study can guide open-median management strategies for traffic safety one-side widened highways.     

Mass flux from a non-aqueous phase liquid pool considering spontaneous expansion of a discontinuous gas phase

The partitioning of non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) compounds to a discontinuous gas phase results in the repeated spontaneous expansion, snap-off, and vertical mobilization of the gas phase. This mechanism has the potential to significantly affect the mass transfer processes that control the dissolution of NAPL pools by increasing the vertical transport of NAPL mass and increasing the total mass transfer rate from the surface of the pool. The extent to which this mechanism affects mass transfer from a NAPL pool depends on the rate of expansion and the mass of NAPL compound in the gas phase. This study used well-controlled bench-scale experiments under no-flow conditions to quantify for the first time the expansion of a discontinuous gas phase in the presence of NAPL. Air bubbles placed in glass vials containing NAPL increased significantly in volume, from a radius of 1.0 mm to 2.0 mm over 215 days in the presence of tetrachloroethene (PCE), and from a radius of 1.2 mm to 2.3 mm over 22 days in the presence of trans-1,2-dichloroethene (tDCE). A one-dimensional mass transfer model, fit to the experimental data, showed that this expansion could result in a mass flux from the NAPL pool that was similar in magnitude to the mass flux expected for the dissolution of a NAPL pool in a two-fluid (NAPL and water) system. Conditions favouring the significant effect of a discontinuous gas phase on mass transfer were identified as groundwater velocities less than ~0.01 m/day, and a gas phase that covers greater than ~10% of the pool surface area and is located within ~0.01 m of the pool surface. Under these conditions the mass transfer via a discontinuous gas phase is expected to affect, for example, efforts to locate NAPL source zones using aqueous concentration data, and predict the lifetime and risk associated with NAPL source zones in a way that is not currently included in the common conceptual models used to assess NAPL-contaminated sites.     

Issues and impacts of Redwood National Park expansion

In 1968, Redwood National Park was created in an atmosphere of controversy and compromise to preserve remnants of the coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) ecosystems and the streams and seashores with which they are associated. The 1968 boundary included the lower portions of several watersheds in the park, which meant that potential impacts from upstream, privately owned lands might occur. Between 1968 and 1978, controversy continued between preservation and forest industry interests over the impacts of harvesting old growth timber upslope and upstream from the park. In 1978, the southern portion of the park around Redwood Creek was expanded by 48,000 acres, moving the boundary from a narrow, one-half mile riparian corridor to ridgelines, but still leaving two-thirds of the total watershed outside of the park. The park expansion has generated biological and social impacts and opportunities. Meeting the objectives of the 1978 legislation will require close coordination between federal and state government and local communities.