The use of Landsat imagery to assess large-scale forest cover changes in space and time,minimizing false-positive changes

A new approach, based on the application of multi-spectral remote sensing data of Landsat imagery, is introduced to determine large-scale spatiotemporal variations of forest cover changes quantitatively and with a high degree of precision. The test area covers about 837,330.5 ha of a mountainous region in Central Italy. The approach employs several multi-temporal Landsat acquisitions to account for forest cover changes larger than 0.5 ha for the period from March 2002 to July 2011. In contrast to automated approaches that strongly curtail mapping time, the approach introduced here allowed us to map only the real forest cover change, based on a robust validation and rectification of the detected forest change. Derived high spatial resolution data of forest change estimates indicate that about 5.7% (47,670.5 ha) of the observed forest area was subject to human-induced change between 2002 and 2011. Moreover, the detected forest cover changes, most of which are identifiable as timber harvesting, are considerably larger than those reported in the official statistics and often fall within the perimeter of restricted areas (i.e., national parks and natural reserves).     

A Comparison of Moisture Scalars and Water Budget Methods to Assess Vegetation-Site Relationships

Quantification of vegetation-site relationships is often required in biogeographic research. Methods linking species to particular sites typically assess evaporative demand and soil moisture availability at the site, though methods differ in how these factors are assessed. This study compares three approaches—a water-budget approach, and field-based and map-based moisture scalars—in their ability to predict the occurrence of a single species, American beech (Fagus grandifolia), observed in 102, 0.04 ha plots in SE Ohio. Actual evapotranspiration and deficit provided results superior to field-based and map-based scalars. Map-based techniques are potentially limited at fine spatial scales, due to the large discrepancy between observed topographic variables, and those modeled with 7.5-minute elevation grids. The study concludes that a water budget approach is applicable to a wide range of studies exploring vegetation-site linkages. It has advantages of being objective in its computation, and applicable at a wide range of spatial scales. Perhaps most importantly with regard to global change research is the dynamic nature of the method: a site's classification will change concurrently with changes in climate.     

Planning with complexity—how do we deal with stakeholder and spatial heterogeneity in land use planning?

Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 105(2):23–37, 2005

As a reaction to the 'top-down 'approach to rural development during the 1970's and 1980's, and in line with the increased focus on ‘putting farmers first’ (bottom-up) through local participation, new and integrated approaches to natural resource management (NRM) have been launched to generate sustainable development. This paradigmatic change has greatly influenced land use planning. Some of the implications involved in this change are discussed in this paper and based on empirical data from Tanzania and Botswana. In this paper we will discuss three critical issues related to land use planning for sustainable NRM: the complexity of livelihood strategies at the local level, the role of different stakeholder interests and the importance of spatial scale considerations. The discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding that the different and often erratic resource endowment of the rural households influences the strategies these households follow in order to meet their overall needs, rather than ‘simply’ maximizing agricultural yields. Furthermore, the importance of spatial scale, in relation to both different stakeholder interests and their needs will be discussed. The paper highlights the need to take community heterogeneity into consideration in land use planning if sustainable NRM is to be achieved in the future.     

Mapping and monitoring of land use changes in post-Soviet western Ukraine using remote sensing data

While agriculture is expanded and intensified in many parts of the world, decreases in land use intensity and farmland abandonment take place in other parts. Eastern Europe experienced widespread changes of agricultural land use after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, rates and patterns of these changes are still not well understood. Our objective was to map and analyze changes of land management regimes, including large-scale cropland, small-scale cropland, and abandoned farmland. Monitoring land management regimes is a promising avenue to better understand the temporal and spatial patterns of land use intensity changes. For mapping and change detection, we used an object-based approach with Superpixel segmentation for delineating objects and a Random Forest classifier. We applied this approach to Landsat and ERS SAR data for the years 1986, 1993, 1999, 2006, and 2010 to estimate change trajectories for this time period in western Ukraine. The first period during the 1990s was characterized by post-socialist transition processes including farmland abandonment and substantial subsistence agriculture. Later on, recultivation processes and the recurrence of industrial, large-scale farming were triggered by global food prices that have led to a growing interest in this region.     

全球环境变化与人类健康

全球环境变化与人类健康研究是目前地球系统科学研究关注的热点问题之一,引起了越来越多机构和科学家的重视,并且已取得了一定的研究成果。本文介绍了全球环境变化研究的内容和意义及目前全球环境变化的研究体系;总结了在全球气候变化、臭氧层损耗、生物多样性的丧失、土地荒漠化和干旱、环境污染、全球化以及城市化等多方面给人类健康带来的影响;概括了目前关于全球环境变化与人类健康研究的热点领域以及我国开展全球环境变化与健康研究的主要问题。     

On the Fringe of Neoliberalism: residential development in outer suburban Sydney

Although there is widespread consensus in human geography that neoliberalism is achieved through the intersection of multiple scales and states, there has been growing emphasis in recent years on the hybrid qualities of neoliberalist-styles of governance. Because hybrid approaches draw attention to the wide range of actors and contradictory agendas underpinning the always uneven expression of neoliberalist projects, they are particularly suited to the identification of residual state capacities in contexts where neoliberalist forms dominate economic and political life. Drawing on two cases of large-scale residential development in New South Wales, namely Warnervale Town Centre on the New South Wales Central Coast and the Australian Defence Industry site at St Marys in Sydney's west, the present paper adopts an hybrid approach in order to identify current state capacities. Through a comparison of both sites, it identifies the potential for socially and ecologically balanced development in the outer suburban context.     

Becoming coca: A materiality approach to a commodity chain analysis of hoja de coca in Colombia

Coca is a controversial plant, existing on the boundary between legality and illegality. This study aims at providing an analytical technique for discussing the problematic of coca in Colombia. Using new theoretical propositions in human geography, a more‐than‐human approach is adopted to encounter coca holistically. The results are a narrative account of coca's social life as experienced by the researcher following its network of non‐cocaine derivatives. An analytical section invokes the Foucauldian dispositif to the drug trade and utilizes concepts of informed materials and technological zones to describe coca outside a political economy discourse. The research finds that coca's dynamic materiality complicates it as a commodity and that these conventional approaches do not fully encapsulate this complexity. By grappling with the messiness of coca's materiality, this paper reveals the multiplicity and interplay of coca's definitions, which lie at the heart of many conflicts.     

土地利用变化的解释

用途转移和集约度变化构成土地利用变化的两种基本类型。土地特性自身的变化、土地使用者个体经济行为分析及社会群体土地管理行为分析 ,构成土地利用变化解释的理论框架。从土地特性考察 ,多宜性和限制性是土地利用发生变化的基本条件。人类对土地利用的结果 ,总是趋向于使土地的多宜性降低和功能类型减少。竞租曲线、转移边际点以及打破土地利用空间均衡的条件分析 ,是土地利用变化经济分析的理论基础 ;“土地利用 -环境效应 -体制响应”反馈环的作用机制 ,构成社会群体土地管理行为分析的理论框架。土地利用变化的机理模型 ,目前主要以新古典经济学和地租理论为基础。多视角的探索可能是土地利用变化机理综合分析的有效途径。     

Potential food deserts and food oases in a post-communist city: Access,quality, variability and price of food in Bratislava-Petržalka

Delimitation tools and definitions of food deserts have not been internationally unified so far. Such comprehension ambiguity may lead to variability in research methods as well as to terminology mismatch in the research. In general, assessment of accessibility of selected (large-scale) food stores network in a region is considered as a suitable tool to identify the food deserts, but this is certainly not the only approach. In our paper some other approaches (such as measuring quality, variability and food price) are assessed together with supermarkets and hypermarkets accessibility examination. Results gained by analyses based on various methodological approaches are then compared and confronted, which simultaneously allows us to compare the individual approaches. For our case study purposes, the largest housing estate in Slovakia's capital city was selected.     

陆地生态系统碳循环研究进展

近年来,碳循环问题日益成为全球变化与地球科学研究领域的前沿与热点问题,其中陆地生态系统碳循环又是全球碳循环中最复杂、受人类活动影响最大的部分。本文结合IGBP和IPCC中有关碳循环的最新报告,介绍了全球碳循环中大气、海洋和陆地生态系统等几个主要碳库的大小及特点,并重点介绍了陆地生态系统碳循环及其基本过程。总结了当前陆地生态系统碳循环研究的四种主要方法:清单方法、反演模拟、涡度相关技术和陆地碳循环模式,介绍了它们的各自特点以及存在的问题,并对陆地碳过程中的不确定性进行了详细分析。此外,还简要叙述了当前碳循环研究中待解决的问题和今后的发展趋势。     

THE PANOPTICON'S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. Over the past two centuries, surveillance technology has advanced in three major spurts. In the first instance the surveillance instrument was a specially designed building, Bentham's Panopticon; in the second, a tightly controlled television network, Orwell's Big Brother; today, an electronic human‐tracking service. Functionally, each technology provided total surveillance within the confines of its designated geographical coverage, but costs, geographical coverage, and benefits have changed dramatically through time. In less than a decade, costs have plummeted from hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person per year for analog surveillance or tens of thousands of dollars for incarceration to mere hundreds of dollars for electronic human‐tracking systems. Simultaneously, benefits to those being watched have increased enormously, so that individual and public resistence are minimized. The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies involving an endless variety of power relationships. Our literal, empirical approach to panopticism has yielded insights that might have been less obvious under the metaphorical approach that has dominated recent scholarly discourse. We conclude that both approaches—literal and metaphorical—are essential to understand what promises to be the greatest instrument of social change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public and scholarly debate—local, national, and global—on this grand social experiment that has already begun without forethought.     

The Study of Human Action in the Physical Environment

Scientists have been formally studying the consequences of human action at least since Buffon and Humboldt in the 1700s. In 1864, Marsh published Man and Nature, a comprehensive synthesis documenting how people had been transforming Earth. This prominent catalogue of how people disturb Nature's harmonies was updated by Marsh in 1874 and by geographers in 1956 and 1990. Today the leading conceptions of human-environmental interaction are similar to Marsh's theme that people are the disturbers of Nature's harmonies. Effects of human action are considered using conceptions such as direct/indirect, intentional/accidental, and beneficial/detrimental. For a fresh approach, physical geographers could consider action more directly. Human action can be studied as any other process is. Systems concepts and energy flows used to evaluate natural forces can also be used to evaluate human forces. The centennial of the Association of American Geographers is an appropriate time to reflect on how physical geographers have been studying human-environmental interactions and to consider new approaches.     

Council Approaches to Implementing Sustainability: a case of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Local government has a key role to play in implementing sustainability. Yet even councils attempting to address the issue of sustainability are often unacceptably slow and ineffective in their endeavours. This study investigates the approaches that councils currently take in implementing sustainability, as this may shed additional light on the slow progress of councils towards sustainability. The approaches of three New South Wales councils were examined and assessed using a model developed for the study that utilised the Ecological Footprint as the primary assessment tool. The model assessed three key aspects of council approaches to implementing sustainability: (1) the issues councils target for change; (2) the methods councils use to change behaviours; and (3) the clarity and holistic nature of their approaches. All three council approaches scored poorly against the model mainly as a result of the councils' failure to target the behaviours of their residents that are causing the greatest ecological harm. The major implication is that councils need to reconsider, and possibly overhaul, their approaches to implementing sustainability as these approaches are unlikely ever to achieve sustainability.     

城市化速度曲线及其政策启示——对诺瑟姆曲线的讨论与发展

诺瑟姆提出的城市化S形曲线是城市地理学的经典理论成果,对它在中国的应用却存在曲解。根据诺瑟姆原文,不是所有国家的城市化水平都能达到100%,城市化水平在30%到70%之间也不是一直处于加速状态;进而推导出城市化速度变化的四阶段倒"U"形曲线:孕育阶段、加速阶段、减速阶段、趋零阶段。其政策含义和启示在于:城市化速度变化有其规律,不能拔苗助长;中国已经迈过城市化速度的拐点,加速城市化不应是长期的主旋律;城市化依然是主要发展方向和趋势;中国城市化理念与重点均需转型;城市化与包容性增长、城乡统筹和农民工市民化是"十二五"时期的主要任务。     

From Geographic Holism to Geographic Information System

Substantial changes in a core idea of geography, integration, have occurred since Alexander von Humboldt published Kosmos (1845-1862). These changes are part of a larger shift in Western civilization to mechanistic reasoning. This shift led to the strengthening of system-based analysis, central to the development of geographic information systems (GIS). The duality of holism and the systems approach has led to an apparent contradiction in geography. R. Hartshorne in The Nature of Geography described this contradiction, but as did Alfred Hettner and Emil Wisotzki before, moved to partial systems as the core concept of geographic integration. Hartshorne's concept of vertical integration is the antecedent for the ubiquitous GIS layer model. The reduction of geographic relationships and processes to mechanistic components (layers) aids the systematic approach, but may lessen geographic understanding of a place's interrelationships. Although the partiality of the system approach was already acknowledged by Finch and Hartshorne in the 1930s, the tension between holistic and system approaches in geography remains. Holism and system-based approaches are indeed complementary methods for developing geographic understanding. Using holistic approaches to understand geographic phenomena, before we teleologically (following a purpose) analyze phenomena as a system, extends GIS to include broader interrelationships of geography in specific locations.     

From Geographic Holism to Geographic Information System

Substantial changes in a core idea of geography, integration, have occurred since Alexander von Humboldt published Kosmos (1845-1862). These changes are part of a larger shift in Western civilization to mechanistic reasoning. This shift led to the strengthening of system-based analysis, central to the development of geographic information systems (GIS). The duality of holism and the systems approach has led to an apparent contradiction in geography. R. Hartshorne in The Nature of Geography described this contradiction, but as did Alfred Hettner and Emil Wisotzki before, moved to partial systems as the core concept of geographic integration. Hartshorne's concept of vertical integration is the antecedent for the ubiquitous GIS layer model. The reduction of geographic relationships and processes to mechanistic components (layers) aids the systematic approach, but may lessen geographic understanding of a place's interrelationships. Although the partiality of the system approach was already acknowledged by Finch and Hartshorne in the 1930s, the tension between holistic and system approaches in geography remains. Holism and system-based approaches are indeed complementary methods for developing geographic understanding. Using holistic approaches to understand geographic phenomena, before we teleologically (following a purpose) analyze phenomena as a system, extends GIS to include broader interrelationships of geography in specific locations.     

土地利用与土地覆盖变化对气候影响的国别对比（英文）

Land use and land cover change(LULCC) strongly influence regional and global climate by combining both biochemical and biophysical processes. However, the biophysical process was often ignored, which may offset the biogeochemical effects, so measures to address climate change could not reach the target. Thus, the biophysical influence of LULCC is critical for understanding observed climate changes in the past and potential scenarios in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the mechanisms and effects of large-scale LULCC on climate change through changing the underlying surface, and thus the energy balance. The key scientific issues on understanding the impacts of human activities on global climate that must be addressed including:(1) what are the basic scientific facts of spatial and temporal variations of LULCC in China and comparative countries?(2) How to understand the coupling driving mechanisms of human activities and climate change on the LULCC and then to forecasting the future scenarios?(3) What are the scientific mechanisms of LULCC impacts on biophysical processes of land surface, and then the climate?(4) How to estimate the contributions of LULCC to climate change by affecting biophysical processes of land surface? By international comparison, the impacts of LULCC on climate change at the local, regional and global scales were revealed and evaluated. It can provide theoretical basis for the global change, and have great significance to mitigate and adapt to global climate changes.     

关于地理学的“人-地系统”理论研究

本文强调地理学面临的问题正在由自然因素引发的环境变化到人类因素引发的环境变化 ,分析了我国“人地关系”变化的严峻态势。指出地理学对“人地关系地域系统”研究可为实施可持续发展战略提供理论基础。阐述了“人地关系地域系统”研究在我国地理学理论发展中的地位 ,并对如何研究“人地关系地域系统”进行了探讨。     

Integrating neo- and paleolimnological approaches to refine interpretations of environmental change

With the development of quantitative transfer functions to relate community structure to physicochemical variables, reconstructions of past environmental conditions have been possible and have enhanced our understanding of various ecosystem processes. There are cases, however, in which this approach is not applicable, or does not provide enough information for the questions being asked. In these cases, some alternatives are to conduct experiments or to examine the distribution of species at a finer spatial resolution. These two approaches have been used as alternatives to or in conjunction with the development of transfer functions. In this review, I discuss the ways in which these two approaches are now being used in paleolimnological studies to enhance our understanding of the ecology of the species found in sediment records and thus refine interpretations of environmental change. My focus is primarily on studies that deal with establishing clearer relationships between environmental variables and the growth or distribution of organisms. I present examples of how these approaches have been integrated in a variety of studies, including those designed to: (1) refine and enhance reconstructions that are based on transfer functions; (2) develop new paleolimnological tools to reconstruct environmental change; (3) explore mechanistic links in the relationships between organisms and commonly reconstructed environmental variables; and (4) pose and test hypotheses based on patterns in the sediment record. These cases demonstrate that the use of these approaches was essential to clarify species-environment relationships as well as lake responses to disturbance. As in all disciplines, however, there are many challenges in this area of research. In particular, the quantitative integration of these approaches with the sediment record is a major challenge, due to disparate spatial and temporal scales. This research can also be quite labor-intensive, and provides information on fewer taxa than in the calibration set approach. It also requires interdisciplinary training and/or collaboration in fields that have historically been less integrated, hence they may require greater effort. These issues may hinder the use of these approaches because of the perceived difficulty. I discuss these challenges and address possible solutions.     

深圳市1986―2020年间海岸线动态变化特征及成因分析

综合利用LandsatTM影像数据、土地利用变更调查数据和城市总体规划成果资料,对深圳市1986―2020年期间海岸线变化进行回顾和预测分析,总结了海岸线动态变化区域土地利用时空动态变化的基本特征并进行了成因探讨。结果表明:深圳市在1986―2020年间海岸线人为改造活动表现出明显的西强东弱的空间分异格局,其中西部海岸线即将全部被改造成人工岸线,东部还保留约100.4km的天然岸线;全市6处岸线热点变化区域累积填海造地总面积将达到108.9km~2,目前已经完成74.0km~2。缓解土地资源供需紧张矛盾、大型工程建设、水产养殖区拓展和海岸带的自然条件差异是海岸线时空动态变化的主要影响因素;深圳市大规模海岸带人为改造已经显现出一系列负面生态环境效应。