Analysis on urban lake change during rapid urbanization using a synergistic approach: A case study of Wuhan,China

To grasp the evolution of urban lakes accurately is quite necessary for studying on the mechanism of city ecological development. The study about extraction with different types of water by remote sensing technology has developed for decades. Many water indexes as the main methods are used to extract water information. Each method has advantage and disadvantage in different situation. A synergistic approach in this study can reduce the uncertainty of urban lake extraction by using four methods: NDWI, MNDWI, RNDWI and SPM. The basic idea behind the synergistic approach is to give each pixel a score based upon the agreement among the different products of four water extraction methods. According to the score of each pixel, the synergy map, which has been created by the products of four methods, is decomposed into sixteen sub-synergy maps. We use Bayesian Decision Theory to screen out the sub-synergy maps with low confidence level. The remaining ones are recombined a refined map. The overall accuracy of refined map reaches 96.44%, higher than any one of the four methods. Wuhan, known as the City of Hundred Lakes, is selected as the study area. We use the synergistic method to keep track of twenty lakes in Wuhan City changing from 1990 to 2013. The total area of twenty lakes has reduced from 130.2478 km² to 102.2971 km² during twenty-three years. The area of Shaihu Lake, which is the most serious of all observed lakes, has shrunk by 77.27%. And Nanhu Lake has lost 8.5 km² of its area that is the most among all lakes. We also find 1990–2000 is the high tide of urban lake shrinking. After the year of 2000, the situation of lake shrinking has been controlled gradually.     

Integrating ecological damages into the user charge for land reclamation: a case study of Xiamen, China

Land reclamation has become one of the great concerns of many coastal states for its serious environmental and ecological effects. User charge is an effective market-based approach for regulating land reclamation. The user change should be designed to reflect the full effect of converting sea to land to ensure sustainable use of marine resources. In this paper, we present an ecological-economic framework to estimate the user charge that covers both the ecological damages and the rent associated with the reclaimed land. We apply the framework to Xiamen’s West Sea. Results of the case study suggest that the rents of reclaimed land for industrial and commercial uses are 49 yuan/m² and 1,066–2,704 yuan/m², respectively. The unit value of ecological damages of land reclamation is 605 yuan/m². The present user charge is too low to regulate excessive land reclamation. The user charge for land reclamation in the study area should be modified to 653 yuan/m² for industrial uses and 35–40% of adjacent land prices for commercial uses.     

Land fragmentation and variation of ecosystem services in the context of rapid urbanization: the case of Taizhou city,China

This study analyzes land use dynamics, land fragmentation, variation of ecosystem service value (ESV), and the underlying driving forces in the context of rapid urbanization in Taizhou city, China. An integrated approach utilizing geographic information system and remote sensing was used to analyze land use/land cover change, spatiotemporal patterns of land fragmentation and variation of ESV over the period of 1995–2010. The results show that the areal extent of built-up land increased by 3.72 times, whereas loss of the cropland, forest, and fallow land accounted for 18.52, 34.80, and 28.94 % of the new built-up land, respectively. As observed, in-filling of the major traffic road networks and axis-based expansion of built-up land occurred. Outward expansion of the built-up land, in particular, indicated that human encroachment into surrounding natural and semi-natural ecosystems leading to decreased total ecosystem service functions of the study area. As a whole, significant change in key landscape, especially a net decrease in forest, and remarkable socioeconomic development should be responsible for an overall decline in 36.29 % of total ESV during the recently rapid urbanization process. Therefore, sustainable development policies should address the decline of ESV.     

Spatial distribution of monthly potential evaporation over mountainous regions: case of the Lhasa River basin,China

Abstract

This paper develops an algorithm for computing spatially-distributed monthly potential evaporation (PE) over a mountainous region, the Lhasa River basin in China. To develop the algorithm, first, correlation analysis of different meteorological variables was conducted. It was observed that PE is significantly correlated with vapour pressure and temperature differences between the land surface and the atmosphere. Second, the Dalton model, which was developed based on the mass transfer mechanism, was modified by including the influence of the related meteorological variables. Third, the influence of elevation on monthly temperature, vapour pressure and wind velocity was analysed, and functions for extending these meteorological variables to any given altitude were developed. Fourth, the inverse distance weighting method was applied to integrate the extended meteorological variables from five stations adjacent to and within the Lhasa River basin. Finally, using the modified Dalton model and the integrated meteorological variables, we computed the spatially-distributed monthly PE. This study indicated that spatially-distributed PE can be obtained using data from sparse meteorological stations, even if only one station is available; the results show that in the Lhasa River basin PE decreases when elevation increases. The new algorithm, including the modified model and the method for spatially extending meteorological variables can provide the basic inputs for distributed hydrological models.

Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz     

Research on interactive coupling mechanism and regularity between urbanization and atmospheric environment: a case study in Shandong Province, China

In the logarithmic curves of the per capita GDP and the urbanization, with the traditional environmental Kuznets equation, this paper presented a coupling equation showing the relationship between urbanization and the atmospheric environment. Based on the “double exponential” coupling curve, the principles of flattening, advancing and fast-falling that new coupling curve should be followed were discussed. According to the two indicators of environmental assessment, namely the treatment cost and the deterioration degree of the environment, a new dual four times matrix model with the corresponding countermeasures and environment policy were introduced. Taking Shandong Province as an example, the coupling relationship between urbanization and atmospheric environment was investigated. The coupling curve showed that it was in running-in stage, and atmospheric quality tended to be improved. SO₂ curve fluctuated more significantly compared with soot and industrial dust curves. The matrix model shows that the combination of flattening principle and advancing principle is preferable for SO₂ emissions, but the fast-falling principle is recommended for soot and industrial dust emissions.     

Water ecological carrying capacity of urban lakes in the context of rapid urbanization: A case study of East Lake in Wuhan

With the excessive development of social economy, water scarcity and water environment deterioration become a common phenomenon in metropolis. As a crucial component of urban water environment system, urban lake is mainly influenced by social economic system and tourism system. In this paper, a framework for quantitatively evaluating development sustainability of urban lake was established by a multi-objective model that represented water ecological carrying capacity (WECC). And nine key indicators including population, irrigation area, tourist quantity, the average number of hotel daily reception, TP, TN, COD_Mn, BOD₅ were chosen from urban social-economy system and natural resilience aspects, with their index weight was determined by using the Structure Entropy Weight method. Then, we took Wuhan East Lake, the largest urban lake in China as a case study, and selected five time sections including 2002, 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2012 to synthetically evaluate and comparatively analyze the dynamic change of WECC. The results showed that: firstly, the water ecological carrying capacity values of the East Lake in five time sections were 1.17, 1.07, 1.64, 1.53 and 2.01 respectively, which all exceeded 1 and increased fluctuation. The rapid growth of population and GDP lead to sharply increasing demand for water quantity. However, a large amount of the domestic sewage and industrial waste led by economic development increases pressure on ecological environment of urban lakes. Secondly, the carrying capacity of the East Lake for tourist activities was still low. The value in 2012 was only 0.22, keeping at a slowly increasing phase, which indicates that the East Lake has large opportunity and space for developing the water resource carrying capacity and could make further efforts to attract tourists. Moreover, the WECC of the East Lake was mainly affected by rapid social and economic development and water environment damage caused by organic pollutants. From the view of urban water sustainable management, we must deeply recognize the reality that water shortages and the limited carrying capacity, and dynamic assessment of WECC provides an early warning approach and control direction of water environment. For the East Lake, it is the primary target to mitigate the carrying capacity of social-economy, especially for prevention of lake area encroachment shrinking and domestic wastewater discharge.     

寒区湿地春、夏浮游植物群落划分——以三江平原安邦河湿地为例

运用多元分析方法对安邦河湿地春、夏浮游植物群落进行划分,结果表明,两季节均可分为3个组群:(1)核心区组群,春季为绒毛平板藻.四角盘星藻群落,夏季为四角盘星藻群落;(2)边缘区组群,春季为梅尼小环藻-尖针杆藻群落,夏季为鱼腥藻-铜绿微囊藻.梅尼小环藻群落;(3)莲花池组群,春季为地中尖头藻群落,夏季为银灰平裂藻群落.各群落的种类组成、数量及多样性存在季节差异,与寒区环境因子季节变化相关.     

Climate changes and their impacts on water resources in semiarid regions: a case study of the Wei River basin,China

Understanding the impacts of climate change and human activity on the hydrological processes in river basins is important for maintaining ecosystem integrity and sustaining local economic development. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of climate variability and human activity on mean annual flow in the Wei River, the largest tributary of the Yellow River. The nonparametric Mann–Kendall test and wavelet transform were applied to detect the variations of hydrometeorological variables in the semiarid Wei River basin in the northwestern China. The identifications were based on streamflow records from 1958 to 2008 at four hydrological stations as well as precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) data from 21 climate stations. A simple method based on Budyko curve was used to evaluate potential impacts of climate change and human activities on mean annual flow. The results show that annual streamflow decreased because of the reduced precipitation and increased PET at most stations. Both annual and seasonal precipitation and PET demonstrated mixed trends of decreasing and increasing, although significant trends (P < 0.05) were consistently detected in spring and autumn at most stations. Significant periodicities of 0.5 and 1 year (P < 0.05) were examined in all the time series. The spectrum of streamflow at the Huaxian station shows insignificant annual cycle during 1971–1975, 1986–1993 and 1996–2008, which is probably resulted from human activities. Climate variability greatly affected water resources in the Beiluo River, whereas human activities (including soil and water conservation, irrigation, reservoirs construction, etc.) accounted more for the changes of streamflow in the area near the Huaxian station during different periods. The results from this article can be used as a reference for water resources planning and management in the semiarid Wei River basin. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mass flows and river response in rapid uplifting regions – A case of lower Yarlung Tsangpo basin,southeast Tibet,China

The fluvial geomorphology in tectonically active (particularly rapid uplift) regions often undergoes continuous change. The rapid uplift is coincident with high erosion rates; consequently, incised valleys are formed. Mass flows (for example, avalanches, landslides, and debris flows) in incised valleys can markedly influence fluvial processes and even reshape valley geomorphology. However, these processes and long-term evolution corresponding to mass flows require further clarification. Field campaigns were carried out in the region near the Yigong Tsangpo and Palong Tsangpo Rivers (hereafter the Yigong and Palong Rivers), the two largest tributaries of the lower Yarlung Tsangpo River, to examine the feedback between fluvial processes and mass flows. Remote sensing images from recent decades were used to compare the channel morphology before and after typical mass flows (particularly catastrophic ones). The morphology of the lower Yigong River has evidently been impacted by landslides, while that of the Palong River has mainly been shaped by glacial processes and debris flows. At present, the morphology of the latter consists of alternating sections of gorges and wide valleys, with a staircase-like longitudinal profile. The gorge sections exhibit single and deeply incised channels with a high-gradient channel bed and terraces. In contrast, the wide valley sections consist of lakes, braided or anabranching channels, gentle bed gradients, and thick alluvial deposits. Debris flows occur more frequently in gullies in the reaches of the gorge sections and rarely in gullies along the wide valley sections. The occurrence of mass flow events has resulted in an imbalance of the previous (quasi-)equilibrium in the river morphology; however, this has triggered negative feedback that is driving the transient river morphology to a new state of (quasi-)equilibrium.     

Climate changes and their impacts on water resources in the arid regions: a case study of the Tarim River basin, China

Streamflow series of five hydrological stations were analyzed with aim to indicate variability of water resources in the Tarim River basin. Besides, impacts of climate changes on water resources were investigated by analyzing daily precipitation and temperature data of 23 meteorological stations covering 1960–2005. Some interesting and important results were obtained: (1) the study region is characterized by increasing temperature, however, only temperature in autumn is in significant increasing trend; (2) precipitation changes present different properties. Generally, increasing precipitation can be detected. However, only the precipitation in the Tienshan mountain area is in significant increasing trend. Annual streamflow of major rivers of the Tarim River basin are not in significant trends, except that of the Akesu River which is in significantly increasing trend. Due to the geomorphologic properties of the Tienshan mountain area, precipitation in this area demonstrates significant increasing trend and which in turn leads to increasing streamflow of the Akesu River. Due to the fact that the sources of streamflow of the rivers in the Tarim River basin are precipitation and melting glacial, both increasing precipitation and accelerating melting ice has the potential to cause increasing streamflow. These results are of practical and scientific merits in basin-scale water resource management in the arid regions in China under the changing environment.     

Challenges of hydrological analysis for water resource development in semi-arid mountainous regions: case study in Iran

Abstract

This study modified the BTOPMC (Block-wise TOPMODEL with the Muskingum-Cunge routing method) distributed hydrological model to make it applicable to semi-arid regions by introducing an adjustment coefficient for infiltration capacity of the soil surface, and then applied it to two catchments above the dams in the Karun River basin, located in semi-arid mountain ranges in Iran. The application results indicated that the introduced modification improved the model performance for simulating flood peaks generated by infiltration excess overland runoff at a daily time scale. The modified BTOPMC was found to fulfil the need to reproduce important signatures of basin hydrology for water resource development, such as annual runoff, seasonal runoff, low flows and flood flows. However, it was also very clear that effective model use was significantly constrained by the scarcity of ground-gauged precipitation data. Considerable efforts to improve the precipitation data acquisition should precede water resource development planning.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis     

Hydrological risk analysis of dam overtopping using bivariate statistical approach: a case study from Geheyan Reservoir,China

Hydrological risk analysis is essential and provides useful information for dam safety management and decision-making. This study presents the application of bivariate flood frequency analysis to risk analysis of dam overtopping for Geheyan Reservoir in China. The dependence between the flood peak and volume is modelled with the copula function. A Monte Carlo procedure is conducted to generate 100,000 random flood peak-volume pairs, which are subsequently transformed to corresponding design flood hydrographs (DFHs) by amplifying the selected annual maximum flood hydrographs (AMFHs). These synthetic DFHs are routed through the reservoir to obtain the frequency curve of maximum water level and assess the risk of dam overtopping. Sensitive analysis is performed to investigate the influence of different AMFH shapes and correlation coefficients of flood peak and volume on estimated overtopping risks. The results show that synthetic DFH with AMFH shape characterized by a delayed time to peak results in higher risk, and therefore highlight the importance of including a range of possible AMFH shapes in the dam risk analysis. It is also demonstrated that the overtopping risk is increased as the correlation coefficient of flood peak and volume increases and underestimated in the independence case (i.e. traditional univariate approach), while overestimated in the full dependence case. The bivariate statistical approach based on copulas can effectively capture the actual dependence between flood peak and volume, which should be preferred in the dam risk analysis practice.     

Spatial risk assessment of typhoon cumulated rainfall: a case study in Taipei area

Typhoon is one of the most destructive disasters in Taiwan, which usually causes many floods and mudslides and prevents the electrical and water supply. Prior to its arrival, how to accurately forecast the path and rainfall of typhoon are important issues. In the past, a regression-based model was the most applied statistical method to evaluate the associated problems. However, it generally ignored the spatial dependence in the data, resulting in less accurate estimation and prediction, and the importance of particular explanatory variables may not be apparent. Therefore, in this paper we focus on assessing the spatial risk variations regarding the typhoon cumulated rainfall at Taipei with respect to typhoon locations by using the spatial hierarchical Bayesian model combined with the spatial conditional autoregressive model, where the model parameters are estimated by designing a family of stochastic algorithms based on a Markov chain Monte Carlo technique. The proposed method is applied to a real data set of Taiwan for illustration. Also, some important explanatory variables regarding the typhoon cumulated rainfall at Taipei are indicated as well.     

A method for estimating soil moisture storage in regions under water stress and storage depletion: a case study of Hai River Basin,North China

Soil moisture is a consideration for soil conservation, agricultural production and climate modelling. This article presents a simple method for estimating soil moisture storage under water stress and storage depletion conditions. The method is driven by the common agro‐hydrologic variables of precipitation (PPT), irrigation (IRR) and evapotranspiration (ET). The proposed method is successfully tested for the 152 000 km² floodplain region of Hai River Basin using 48 consecutive months (2003–2006) of data. Soil moisture data from global land data assimilation system/Noah land surface model are validated with ground‐truth data from 102 soil moisture monitoring sites. The validated soil moisture is used in combination with in situ groundwater data to quantify total water storage change (TWSC) in the region. The estimated storage change is in turn compared with gravity recovery and climate experiment‐derived TWSC for the study area. The soil moisture and TWSC terms show favourable agreements, with discrepancies of < 10% on the average. While there is no consistent seasonal trend in soil moisture, TWSC shows a strong seasonality. It is low in spring and high in summer. This trend corresponds with the IRR–PPT season in the study area. Change in groundwater and total water storage indicates storage depletion in the basin. Storage depletion in the region is driven mainly by groundwater IRR and ET loss. Despite the low PPT and high ET, there is narrowing seasonal trend in soil moisture. This is achieved at the expense of groundwater storage. IRR pumping has induced extensive groundwater depletion in the basin. It is therefore vital to develop cultivation strategies that aim at limiting IRR pumping and ET loss. Water management practices that not only reduce waste but also ensure high productivity and ecological sustainability could also mitigate storage depletion in the region. These measures could reduce further not only the seasonal trend in soil moisture but also that in groundwater storage. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Scaling properties of the runoff variations in the arid and semi-arid regions of China: a case study of the Yellow River basin

We analyzed long daily runoff series at six hydrological stations located along the mainstem Yellow River basin by using power spectra analysis and multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) technique with aim to deeply understand the scaling properties of the hydrological series in the Yellow River basin. Research results indicate that: (1) the runoff fluctuations of the Yellow River basin exhibit self-affine fractal behavior and different memory properties at different time scales. Different crossover frequency (1/f) indicates that lower crossover frequency usually corresponds to larger basin area, and vice versa, showing the influences of river size on higher frequency of runoff variations. This may be due to considerable regulations of river channel on the runoff variations in river basin of larger basin size; (2) the runoff fluctuations in the Yellow River basin exhibit short-term memory properties at smaller time scales. Crossover analysis by MF-DFA indicates unchanged annual cycle within the runoff variations, implying dominant influences of climatic changes on changes of runoff amount at longer time scales, e.g. 1 year. Human activities, such as human withdrawal of freshwater and construction of water reservoirs, in different reaches of the Yellow River basin may be responsible for different scaling properties of runoff variations in the Yellow River basin. The results of this study will be helpful for hydrological modeling in different time scales and also for water resource management in the arid and semi-arid regions of China.     

Reservoir-type water source vulnerability assessment: a case study of the Yuqiao Reservoir,China

ABSTRACT

In this study, we developed a method to assess reservoir-type water source vulnerability (WSV) and adapted the method to the Yuqiao Reservoir (in Tianjin in North China). First, we identified the factors that influence reservoir vulnerability and selected suitable indexes for vulnerability assessment. Second, the CRITIC, AHP and integrated weighting methods were applied to quantify the index weight. Third, the information diffusion method was applied to process the index data. Finally, the vulnerability of the Yuqiao Reservoir was assessed, and the results showed that the vulnerability of the Yuqiao Reservoir is high, with social factors (i.e. the road traffic system, automatic management control system, potential menace in evaluation scope, destructive man-made accidents, emergency management plan, and per capita water consumption) being the main reasons.     

Levels of estrogenic compounds in Xiamen Bay sediment, China

Concentrations of seven estrogenic compounds, i.e., estrone (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2), 17α-ethynylestradiol(EE2), diethylstilbestrol (DES), nonylphenol (NP), octylphenol (OP) and bisphenol A (BPA), were determined in sediments and pore water from Xiamen Bay in China, and their distributions and potential risks in the Bay were assessed. Total estrogenic compounds concentrations varied from 49.20 to 1230.69 ng/g dw in sediments and from 102.33 to 4376.60 ng/L in pore water. The highest levels of these compounds were found at Yundang Lagoon. The results showed that estrogenic compounds in Xiamen Bay originated mainly from municipal wastewaters. Compared with other areas, Xiamen Bay was contaminated with high levels of estrogen hormones. This contamination poses a potential threat to benthic organisms. Although a good relationship (r = 0.94) was observed between the estrogenic compounds concentrations and total organic carbon (TOC) contents in sediments, which did not indicate that the sediment organic matter favors the accumulation of the detected estrogenic compounds.     

基于快速城市化的饮用水系统适应能力评估——以江苏省太湖地区为例

江苏省环太湖地区快速城市化和工业化加剧饮用水危机,整合研究水源地、供水、用水、排污处理和技术5个方面对于支撑该地区可持续发展的适应能力,对揭示饮用水供需关系、存在问题、部门协调与综合决策等具有现实意义.本文以构建5个子系统适应能力指标体系为主线,通过分指数与综合指数评价的运算,得出研究地区饮用水系统适应能力等级水平、地域分异特征及影响因素分析;针对各子系统存在问题,提出维护和提升适应能力的对策措施.研究表明,适应能力较强的地区占总面积29.1%,其5个子系统适应能力均较强.适应能力中等地区占41.2%,一类是各子系统适应能力基本均等,另一类是排污处理子系统适应能力较强,但用水子系统得分较低.适应能力较差地区占29.7%,主要是技术子系统分值低,其它子系统适应能力处于中等偏下.因此需加大对各子系统适应能力的调控与提升.     

Research on the impact assessment of urbanization on air environment with urban environmental entropy model: a case study

A new concept of urban environmental entropy was introduced to investigate the effect of urbanization on air environment considering the fact that rapid development of urbanization may have negative influence on the whole air environment system. The urban environmental entropies which were built based on the generalized thermodynamic entropy and the generalized statistic entropy, respectively. These two entropy models have been used to analyze the relationship between the development of urbanization and air environment. The negative entropy flow mechanism was proposed to reveal the advantages and approaches of regional cities in improving air environment system. A case study on 17 cities in Shandong Province of China showed that the values of urban environmental entropy were negative in most cities from 2001 to 2008, which implies that there is a positive correlation between the development of urbanization and air environment and that is a negative entropy development level in Shandong Province of China. In 2008, the urbanization of Qingdao city and Jinan city improved their air environments. Moreover, restraints for both cities in air environment improvement were recognized according to the analysis of negative entropy flow mechanism.     

福建三明地区被污染土壤的磁学性质及其环境意义

对福建三明某钢铁厂和火电厂附近的污染表土样品进行了多参数的岩石磁学测试分析,包括χ T曲线、磁滞回线、等温剩磁获得曲线等. 三明地区污染表土中的磁性矿物有磁铁矿、赤铁矿和磁黄铁矿. 样品中磁性矿物的平均粒度较粗,为较大的准单畴,甚至多畴,粒度明显大于成土作用所产生的磁性颗粒. 粗粒的磁铁矿颗粒是污染物的主要磁性组分. 虽然磁化率测量可以作为一种简单、快速而且廉价的检测污染土壤的方法,但同时辅以必要的岩石磁学测量将有利于提取更多的污染信息. 对于低磁化率的污染土壤,亚铁磁性硫化物的存在可以作为土壤可能被污染的证据之一.