Linking Land Cover and Water Quality in New York City’S Water Supply Watersheds

The Catskill/Delaware reservoirs supply 90% of New York City’s drinking water. The City has implemented a series of watershed protection measures, including land acquisition, aimed at preserving water quality in the Catskill/Delaware watersheds. The objective of this study was to examine how relationships between landscape and surface water measurements change between years. Thirty-two drainage areas delineated from surface water sample points (total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform bacteria concentrations) were used in step-wise regression analyses to test landscape and surface-water quality relationships. Two measurements of land use, percent agriculture and percent urban development, were positively related to water quality and consistently present in all regression models. Together these two land uses explained 25 to 75% of the regression model variation. However, the contribution of agriculture to water quality condition showed a decreasing trend with time as overall agricultural land cover decreased. Results from this study demonstrate that relationships between land cover and surface water concentrations of total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform bacteria counts over a large area can be evaluated using a relatively simple geographic information system method. Land managers may find this method useful for targeting resources in relation to a particular water quality concern, focusing best management efforts, and maximizing benefits to water quality with minimal costs.The United States Environmental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development funded and managed the research described here. It has been subjected to Agency’s administrative review and approved for publication as an EPA document.     

Modeling the spatial pattern of farmland using GIS and multiple logistic regression: a case study of Maotiao River Basin, Guizhou Province, China

Land use change is an important topic in the field of global environmental change and sustainable development. Land use change modeling has attracted substantial attention because it helps researchers understand the mechanisms of land use change and assists regulatory bodies in formulating relevant policies. Maotiao River Basin is located in the province of Guizhou, China, which has a developed agricultural industry in the karst mountain areas. This paper selected biophysical and social–economic factors as independent variables, and constructed a multiple logistic regression of farmland spatial distribution probability by random sampling. Then, by using GIS technology and integrating the 2000 data, this study predicted the farmland spatial pattern. When the predicted map was compared with the actual farmland map for 2000, we noted that 71% of the simulation is in accordance with the 2000 farmland pattern. The result satisfactorily proves the reasonability and applicability of our model.     

Assessing land use impacts on flood processes in complex terrain by using GIS and modeling approach

A distributed hydrologic modeling and GIS approach is applied for the assessment of land use impact in the Steinsel sub-basin, Alzette, Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. The assessment focuses on the runoff contributions from different land use classes and the potential impact of land use changes on runoff generation. The results show that the direct runoff from urban areas is dominant for a flood event compared with runoff from other land use areas in this catchment, and tends to increase for small floods and for the dry season floods, whereas the interflow from forested, pasture and agricultural field areas contributes to the recession flow. Significant variations in flood volume, peak discharge, time to the peak, etc., are found from the model simulation based on the three hypothetical land use change scenarios.     

Using environmental stressor information to predict the ecological status of Maryland non-tidal streams as measured by biological indicators

In Maryland, U.S., an interim framework has recentlybeen developed for using biologically based thresholds, or `biocriteria', to assess the health of nontidal streams statewide at watershed scales. The evaluation of impairment is based on indices of biological integrity from the Maryland Biological Stream Survey (MBSS). We applied logistic regression to quantify how the biotic integrity of streams at a local scale is affected by cumulative effects resulting from catchment land uses, point sources, and nearby transmission line rights-of-way. Indicators for land use were developed from the remote sensing National Land Cover Data and applied at different scales. We determined that the risk of local impairment in nontidal streams rapidly increases with increased urban land use in the catchment area. The average likelihood of failing biocriteria doubled with every 10% points increment in urban land, thus an increase in urban land use from 0 to 20% quadruples the risk of impairment. For the basins evaluated in this study, catchments with more than 40–50% urban land use had greater than 80% probability of failing biocriteria, on average. Inclusion of rights-of-way and point sources in the model did not significantly improve the fit for this data set, most likely because of their low numbers. The overall results indicate that our predictive modeling approach can help pinpoint stream ecosystems experiencing or vulnerable to degradation.     

Controlled-release fertilizer(CRF):A green fertilizer for controlling non-point contamination in agriculture

Fertilizers contribute greatly to high yields but also result in environmental non-point contamination, including the emission of greenhouse gas(N2O) and eutrophication of water bodies. How to solve this problem has become a serious challenge, especially for China as its high ecological pressure. Controlled-release fertilizer(CRF) has been developed to minimize the contamination while keeping high yield and has become a green fertilizer for agriculture. Several CRFs made with special coating technology were used for testing the fertilizer effects in yield and environment through pot experiment and field trial. The result indicated that the CRFs had higher N use efficiency, thus reducing N loss through leaching and volatilization while keeping higher yields. Comparing with imported standard CRFs,the test on CRFs showed similar fertilizer effect but with much lower cost. CRFs application is becoming a new approach for minimizing non-point contamination in agriculture.     

植物遗传资源保护与利用的市场化机制和国际制度

随着植物物种资源的不断减少和因生物技术迅猛发展对植物遗传资源需求的不断增加 ,植物遗传资源正逐步由公共物品转变为稀缺物品。坚持《生物多样性公约》所确立的遗传资源效益公平分享原则 ,完善现有国际多边体系 ,促进以“遗传编码功能”价值概念和遗传资源保护效应“内部化”与“补偿”方案为基础的植物遗传资源市场化保护与利用机制的形成 ,建立“植物遗传资源交易所”和“生物多样性合作社” ,将有助于提高世界各国尤其是发展中国家保护植物遗传资源的积极性 ,实现全球植物遗传资源的可持续利用     

浅析空气质量监测连续自动采样分析及运行管理

通过14年在环境空气质量监测中,采用连续自动采样实验分析方法,介绍了环境空气监测点位的布设、连续采样监测技术及其运行管理。     

The effects of land use and its patterns on soil properties in a small catchment of the Loess Plateau

Due to relatively strong human activities in the hilly area of Loess Plateau,the natural vegetation has been destroyed,and landscape pattern based on agricultural land matrix was land use mosaic composing of shrub land,grassland,woolland and orchard.This pattern has an important effect on soil moisture and soil nutrients.The Danangou catchment,a typical small catchment,was selected to study the effects of land use and its patterns on soil moisture and nutrients in this paper.The results are as follows:The comparisons of soil moisture among seven land uses for wet year and dry year were performed:(1)the average of soil moisture content for whole catchment was 12.11% in wet year,while it was 9.37% in dry year;(2)soil moisture among seven land uses was significantly different in dry year,but not in wet year;(3) form wet year to dry year,the profile type of soil moisture changed from decreasing type to fluctuation-type and from fluctuant type to increasing type;(4)the increasing trend in soil moisture from the top to foot of hillslope occurred in simple land use along slope,while complicated distribution of soil moisture was observed in multiple land uses along slope.The relationships between soil nutrients and land uses and landscape positions were analysed:(1)five nutrient contents of soil organic matter(SOM),total N(TN),available N(AN),total P(TP) and available P(AP) in hilly area were lower than that in other areas.SOM content was less than 1%,TN content less than 0.07%,and TP fallow land and cropland,and higher level in soil fertility was found in crop-fruit intercropping land among croplands;(3)soil nutrient distribution and responses to landscape positions were variable depending on slope and the location of land use types.