Forest transitions in tropical landscapes: A test in the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot

Analyzing temporal changes in forest amount and configuration is paramount to better design future forest management interventions. Such analyses are especially required for tropical biomes, which are usually subject to dynamic and heterogeneous land uses. Recent studies have suggested that many tropical biomes are passing through the process of “forest transition”, i.e. an overall change from forest loss to forest gain. However, this hypothesis remains scarcely tested, due to the difficulty of obtaining detailed, quantitative historical records of forest cover. In this study, we investigate 38 years of land use change in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot, from 1976 to 2014, using multitemporal datasets from aerial photographs and satellite images. We classified the historical series to produce land use maps and calculated a set of landscape metrics, including total forest cover, patch size, patch shape and patch connectivity. Our results indicated non-linear changes through time in forest loss and gain and also in landscape structure, which can be classified into two distinct periods. The first period (1976–1996) was marked by expressive forest loss and fragmentation, whereas the second (1996–2014) was characterized by a much less intense forest dynamics, with little deforestation being balanced by forest regeneration. We attribute the forest dynamics observed to temporal changes in socioeconomic factors, such as increasing human settlements and changes in environmental protection policies. Our results show that current forests are a heterogeneous mosaic of forests with different ages, and support the hypothesis that forest transition is occurring in Atlantic Forest landscapes.     

Influence of changes in developed land and precipitation on hydrology of a coastal Texas watershed

Freshwater inflows, among the most important factors in the overall health of estuarine environments, can be altered both by regional climatic influences as well as changes in land use and land cover. We conduct a scenario analysis to study the individual and combined impacts of changes in land use and land cover and in precipitation patterns in a coastal Texas watershed. The watershed is one of the major sources of freshwater for the estuarine area within the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR). Our scenario analysis suggests that climatic changes are more influential than land changes at the watershed level. However, localized impacts of land change may still be significant on habitats within the NERR site. Results from our watershed-level analysis poorly agree with the recommended freshwater flows established for the region, which deserve further scrutiny. Our findings suggest that geomorphic characteristics of the streams in the watershed need to be taken into consideration in hydrological modeling. Further research on the interactions between land change and hydrological dynamics should also aim for tighter temporal integration of the two sets of processes.     

中国传统农区历史耕地数据网格化方法

建立具有空间属性的历史时期土地覆被数据集有助于更好地模拟土地覆被变化的气候 与生态效应。根据我国历史时期土地开发利用的特点, 深入分析了影响我国历史时期土地开 发利用的主导因子, 量化了海拔高度、坡度、人口分布等自然及人文要素与耕地分布的关系, 并以此为依据设计了一套将我国传统农区历史耕地数据网格化的方法与算法模型, 计算各网 格(分辨率为60 km×60 km) 耕地面积占整个农区耕地总面积的比重、以及各网格的耕地面 积与垦殖率; 同时利用基于《嘉庆重修一统志》重建的中国传统农区历史耕地资料, 采用上 述方法与算法建立了研究区内1820 年(清嘉庆二十五年) 60 km×60 km 空间尺度的耕地数据 集, 并绘制了分布图。重建结果与册载府级田亩数据的比较分析表明: 该方法与算法可以有 效地将以行政区域为统计单元的中国历史耕地数据量化为具有统一且更高空间分辨率的网格 化数据集。     

Monitoring land changes in an urban area using satellite imagery,GIS and landscape metrics

Monitoring land changes is an important activity in landscape planning and resource management. In this study, we analyze urban land changes in Atlanta metropolitan area through the combined use of satellite imagery, geographic information systems (GIS), and landscape metrics. The study site is a fast-growing large metropolis in the United States, which contains a mosaic of complex landscape types. Our method consisted of two major components: remote sensing-based land classification and GIS-based land change analysis. Specifically, we adopted a stratified image classification strategy combined with a GIS-based spatial reclassification procedure to map land classes from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes acquired in two different years. Then, we analyzed the spatial variation and expansion of urban land changes across the entire metropolitan area through post classification change detection and a variety of GIS-based operations. We further examined the size, pattern, and nature of land changes using landscape metrics to examine the size, pattern, and nature of land changes. This study has demonstrated the usefulness of integrating remote sensing with GIS and landscape metrics in land change analysis that allows the characterization of spatial patterns and helps reveal the underlying processes of urban land changes. Our results indicate a transition of urbanization patterns in the study site with a limited outward expansion despite the dominant suburbanization process.     

土地利用/土地覆被变化研究:寻求新的综合途径

土地利用/土地覆被变化是很复杂的现象,参与该项目的研究人员要避免“瞎子摸大象”那样的片面性,必须寻求新的综合研究途径。为此,不能简单地沿袭传统土地利用研究的思路和方法,需要不断提出新的研究论题;对土地利用变化驱动力必须有一种普遍的、综合的认识;需要将多个案例研究联结为一个可代表区域空间异质性的网络,需要作多空间尺度的研究,从而将地方尺度和区域尺度的土地覆被动态联系起来;需要发展新的研究方法,并将从农户调查到遥感数据的各种信息综合起来;尤其需要形成关于土地利用/土地覆被变化的综合科学理论框架     

土地利用变化预测的案例推理方法

当前,基于案例的推理(Case-Based Reasoning,CBR)在解决复杂的地学问题时.对地学案例的表达和历史案例的相似性计算与推理存在明显缺陷,需要在CBR的表达模型和空间相似性计算与推理算法进行拓展.本文针对土地利用变化问题,首先在分析土地利用变化各种定量方法基础上,提出利用CBR进行土地利用变化分析的研究思路:其次,针对土地利用变化的空间特性及隐含的空间关系特性.给出土地利用变化案例的表达模型,案例间内蕴空间关系抽取算法,以及考虑案例间空间关系的CBR相似性推理模型:最后,进行珠江口区域土地利用变化的CBR方法试验.预测精度达到80%.为了进一步评价CBR方法对土地利用变化预测的有效性.在实例部分采用同样的实验数据进行贝叶斯网络的预测方法实验.由两种方法对比可知.CBR是从复杂到简单进行地学问题求解的一种有效方法.     

Gridding cropland data reconstruction over the agricultural region of China in 1820

Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of LUCC change with climate and ecosystem simulation, but the result could only be determined precisely if a high-resolution underlying land cover map is used. While the efforts based satellites have provided a good baseline for present land cover, what the next advancement in the research about LUCC change required is the development of reconstruction of historical LUCC change, especially spatially-explicit historical dataset. Being different from other similar studies, this study is based on the analysis of historical land use patterns in the traditional cultivated region of China. Taking no account of the less important factors, altitude, slope and population patterns are selected as the major drivers of reclamation in ancient China, and used to design the HCGM (Historical Cropland Gridding Model, at a 60 km×60 km resolution), which is an empirical model for allocating the historical cropland inventory data spatially to grid cells in each political unit. Then we use this model to reconstruct cropland distribution of the study area in 1820, and verify the result by prefectural cropland data of 1820, which is from the historical documents. The statistical analyzing result shows that the model can simulate the patterns of the cropland distribution in the historical period in the traditional cultivated region efficiently.     

Broad scale forest cover reconstruction from historical topographic maps

Land cover change is one of the major contributors to global change, but long-term, broad-scale, detailed and spatially explicit assessments of land cover change are largely missing, although the availability of historical maps in digital formats is increasing. The problem often lies in efficiency of analyses of historical maps for large areas. Our goal was to assess different methods to reconstruct land cover and land use from historical maps to identify a time-efficient and reliable method for broad-scale land cover change analysis. We compared two independent forest cover reconstruction methods: first, regular point sampling, and second, wall-to-wall mapping, and tested both methods for the Polish Carpathians (20,000 km²) for the 1860s, 1930s and 1970s. We compared the two methods in terms of their reliability for forest change analysis, relative to sampling error, point location and landscape context including local forest cover, area of the spatial reference unit and forest edge-to-core ratio. Our results showed that the point-based analysis overestimated forest cover in comparison to wall-to-wall mapping by 1–3%, depending on the mapping period. The reasons for the differences were mainly the backdating approach and map generalisation rather than the point grid position or sampling error. When we compared forest cover trajectories over time, we found that the point-based reconstruction captured forest cover dynamics with a comparable accuracy to the wall-to-wall mapping. More broadly, our assessment showed that historical maps can provide valuable data on long-term land cover trends, and that point-based sampling can be an efficient and accurate way to assess forest area and change trends. We suggest that our point-based approach could allow land cover mapping across much of Europe starting in the 1800s. Our findings are important because they suggest that land cover change, a key component of global change, can be assessed over large areas much further back in time than it is commonly done. This would allow to truly understand path dependencies, land use legacies, and historical drivers of land cover change.     

Development of Land Resources in Transitional Zones Based on Ecological Security Pattern: A Case Study in China

Land use based on landscape ecological security pattern provides a scientific basis for alleviating conflicts between land conservation and human use, ensuring concomitant economic development and ecological integrity. The majority of studies by Chinese researchers have been focused on the carrying capacity and land development intensity, and less attention has been paid to the ecological security pattern of the landscape in Mianzhu in the transitional zone between the Chengdu Plain region and the Longmen Mountains, western China. However, land resources are undergoing significant changes resulting from land use associated with rapid economic development and demographic growth. In this study, we constructed a minimum cumulative resistance model in Mianzhu in the transitional zone, and the land space was divided into optimized development areas, key development areas, restricted development areas, and prohibited development areas according to the landscape ecological security pattern based on the model surface. These land use types covered 7218.39 ha, 17,974.75 ha, 21,545.39 ha, and 77,791.46 ha, respectively. We also examined land use changes over the last 20 years and quantitatively analyzed the relationships between land use changes and geographic factors based on remote sensing and geographic information system. The information obtained from this research ultimately impacts future policies and plans regarding land resources and can be used to promote the sustainable use of land resources in the region.

     

Common features and different trajectories of land cover changes in six Western Mediterranean urban regions

Land use and land cover change (LULCC) dynamics have been particularly strong in the Mediterranean region, due to its historical development and to agro-pedoclimatic conditions favorable to human settlement. This area has undergone in the 1950s and the 1980s intense urbanization processes that has followed different trajectories. Urban expansion commonly occurs at the expense of agricultural land, leading to the fragmentation of natural areas and conflicts over access to land resources. These dynamics mainly concern the fringe between urban and agricultural land, e.g. the peri-urban areas usually included within functional urban regions. Here, to identify common features of LULCC in Western Mediterranean urban regions, we investigated two main features: direct changes due to urbanization and indirect changes affecting non-artificial land uses. We compared LULCC dynamics in 6 case studies from the north and south of the Western Mediterranean region: the urban regions of Montpellier and Avignon (France), Pisa (Italy), Madrid (Spain), Meknes (Morocco), and Constantine (Algeria), using a 30-year multitemporal spatial analysis (1980–2010). Two series of Landsat TM images were acquired for each case study and land cover data were analyzed both for dynamics and for land patterns, using landscape and class metrics. We found no significant north-south differences in LULCC dynamics between the investigated Western Mediterranean urban regions. Differences are more pronounced between small–medium cities and large metropolitan areas in type of urban diffusion, which is more sprawled in small–medium cities and more compact in large metropolitan areas. Rather, differences occur in LULCC not directly affected by urbanization, since in Northern Mediterranean urban regions afforestation and abandonment of agricultural areas are prevalent and closer to the urban areas, whereas transformation of natural areas into agricultural ones occurs mainly in Southern Mediterranean urban regions at a similar distance from urban areas than it happens for afforested or abandoned areas. In attempting for the first time to assess LULCC in these Mediterranean urban regions, we provide a preliminary comprehensive analysis that can contribute to the active LULCC research in the Mediterranean basin and that can be easily applied to other Mediterranean urban regions.     

清代中期江苏省土地利用格局网格化重建

针对当前历史土地利用空间重建研究多基于单一地类且空间分辨率较低的特征,提出较高分辨率全地类土地利用空间重建方法。以1820年为时间断面,以现代江苏省域为研究区,以历史文献记载、历史地理学研究成果、现代统计数据、自然环境数据等为支撑,将土地利用类型划分为耕地、聚落用地（含城镇用地、农村居民点用地）、水域和其他用地（含林草地及未利用地）,考虑区域自然资源和社会经济特征,提出理论假设,对府级耕地、城镇用地、农村居民点用地数量进行修正;沿用以现代土地利用格局为基础反演历史土地利用格局的基本思路,从人地关系角度出发,采用治所邻近度分析、综合评价等方法重建了1820年100 m×100 m空间格网下的江苏省土地利用格局,同时,通过不同地理分区统计及降尺度对比间接验证等分析了重建结果。结果表明：① 1820年江苏省耕地、城镇用地、农村居民点用地、水域用地及其他用地面积分别占区域总面积的48.49%、4.46%、0.16%、15.03%和31.86%;② 1820年研究区内土地垦殖率较高,但建设用地比率较低,受人口分布、地形及河网密度等影响,不同地理分区土地利用差异较为显著;③ 农村居民点用地及耕地的降尺度分析结果均呈显著线性正相关,在一定程度上表明研究结果具有合理性。     

农业物候动态对地表生物物理过程及气候的反馈研究进展

地表过程对全球变化的响应和反馈是地球系统科学研究的核心课题之一,目前的研究多关注全球变化对地表过程的影响,而地表动态过程对地表生物物理过程及气候的反馈研究较少。系统认识地表物候动态对生物物理过程及气候的反馈对深化地球系统科学研究有着重要的意义。本文从农业物候动态的事实、农业物候动态在陆面过程模型中的参数化表达、农业物候动态对地表生物物理过程及气候的反馈等方面进行综述,发现在气候变化和管理措施影响下,以种植期和灌浆期为代表的农业物候期发生了显著的规律性变化;耦合农业物候动态,改善了模型对地表动态过程、生物物理过程和大气过程的数字化表达;农业物候变化对地表净辐射、潜热、感热、反照率和气温、降水、环流等过程产生了影响,并表现出以地表能量分配为主的气候反馈机理。针对农业物候动态对地表生物物理过程及气候效应的时空重要性,需要继续开展以下方面的工作：① 加强全球变化对地表物候动态的影响及其反馈的综合研究;② 不同光谱波段地表反射率与农业物候动态的关系研究;③ 农业物候动态引起的作物生理学特征变化在地表生物物理过程中的贡献;④ 重视不同气候区物候动态对气候反馈效应的差异。     

Reconstructing the historical spatial land use pattern for Jiangsu Province in mid-Qing Dynasty

This study is proposed to reconstruct a high-resolution spatial distribution of historical land use pattern with all land use types to overcome low-accuracy and/or the monotonic land use type in current historical land use reconstruction studies. The year of 1820 is set as the temporal section and the administrative area of Jiangsu Province is the study area. Land use types being reconstructed include farmland, residential land (including both urban land and rural residential land), water body, and other land (including forest land, grassland, and unused land). Data sources mainly refer to historical documents, historical geographic research outcomes, contemporary statistics, and natural environmental data. With great considerations over regional natural resources and social and economic conditions, a few theoretical assumptions have been proposed to facilitate the adjustment on prefecture farmland, urban land, and rural residential land. Upholding the idea that the contemporary land use pattern has been inherently in sequence with the historical land use pattern as well as the land use pattern shall be consistent to its accessibility, this study reconstructs the land use pattern in Jiangsu Province in 1820 with 100 m*100 m grids based on accessibility analysis and comprehensive evaluation. The outcome has been tested as valid by regionalization and correlation analysis. The resulted spatial distribution shows that back in 1820 in Jiangsu Province: (1) farmland, urban land, rural residential land, water body, and other land take about 48.49%, 4.46%, 0.16%, 15.03%, and 31.86% of the total land area respectively; (2) the land use pattern features high proportion of land in farming while low-proportion land in non-farming uses while population, topography, and the density of water body lead to great spatial variations; and (3) the reconstruction methodology has been tested as reasonable based on significant positive correlations between 1820 data and 1985 for both farmland and rural residential land at the prefecture level.     

Human and climate impact on catchment development during the Holocene — Geul River, the Netherlands

Interest in the Holocene development of small to medium-sized river catchments in Western and Central Europe in relation to changes in land use and climate has increased over the past years. In this study we reconstruct the Holocene landscape development and fluvial dynamics of the Geul River (The Netherlands) and the main forcing mechanisms of environmental change. Field studies were carried out and we used OSL and ¹⁴C dating methods to reconstruct the Holocene valley development. Our study shows that 2 periods of deforestation (during the Roman Period and the High Middle Ages) led to severe soil erosion and increased floodplain sedimentation in the catchment of the Geul River, possibly combined with periods of increased wetness during the High Middle Ages. Alluvial fans have been active since the Roman deforestation phase. Our results show that the Geul catchment is highly sensitive to changes in land use.     

清代中期江苏省土地利用格局网格化重建（英文）

This study is proposed to reconstruct a high-resolution spatial distribution of historical land use pattern with all land use types to overcome low-accuracy and/or the monotonic land use type in current historical land use reconstruction studies. The year of 1820 is set as the temporal section and the administrative area of Jiangsu Province is the study area. Land use types being reconstructed include farmland, residential land(including both urban land and rural residential land), water body, and other land(including forest land, grassland, and unused land). Data sources mainly refer to historical documents, historical geographic research outcomes, contemporary statistics, and natural environmental data. With great considerations over regional natural resources and social and economic conditions, a few theoretical assumptions have been proposed to facilitate the adjustment on prefecture farmland, urban land, and rural residential land. Upholding the idea that the contemporary land use pattern has been inherently in sequence with the historical land use pattern as well as the land use pattern shall be consistent to its accessibility, this study reconstructs the land use pattern in Jiangsu Province in 1820 with 100 m*100 m grids based on accessibility analysis and comprehensive evaluation. The outcome has been tested as valid by regionalization and correlation analysis. The resulted spatial distribution shows that back in 1820 in Jiangsu Province:(1) farmland, urban land, rural residential land, water body, and other land take about 48.49%, 4.46%, 0.16%, 15.03%, and 31.86% of the total land area respectively;(2) the land use pattern features high proportion of land in farming while low-proportion land in non-farming uses while population, topography, and the density of water body lead to great spatial variations; and(3) the reconstruction methodology has been tested as reasonable based on significant positive correlations between 1820 data and 1985 for both farmland and rural residential land at the prefecture level.     

中国传统农区1820年耕地数据网格化方法

Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of LUCC change with climate and ecosystem simulation, but the result could only be determined precisely if a high-resolution underlying land cover map is used. While the efforts based satellites have provided a good baseline for present land cover, what the next advancement in the research about LUCC change required is the development of reconstruction of historical LUCC change, especially spatially-explicit historical dataset. Being different from other similar studies, this study is based on the analysis of historical land use patterns in the traditional cultivated region of China. Taking no account of the less important factors, altitude, slope and population patterns are selected as the major drivers of reclamation in ancient China, and used to design the HCGM (Historical Cropland Gridding Model, at a 60 km×60 km resolution), which is an empirical model for allocating the historical cropland inventory data spatially to grid cells in each political unit. Then we use this model to reconstruct cropland distribution of the study area in 1820, and verify the result by prefectural cropland data of 1820, which is from the historical documents. The statistical analyzing result shows that the model can simulate the patterns of the cropland distribution in the historical period in the traditional cultivated region efficiently. Foundation: National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40471007; Innovation Knowledge Project of CAS, No.KZCX2-YW-315 Author: Lin Shanshan (1982–), Master, specialized in historical environmental change.     

中国农村宅基地转型的理论与证实

土地利用转型是土地利用变化的表现形式之一,也是由IGBP和IHDP联合发起的全球土地研究计划 (GLP) 的重要研究内容。目前土地利用/覆被变化 (LUCC) 研究仍然有待进一步理论化,在学科综合与集成基础上提出的假设对土地变化科学显得尤为重要。土地利用转型研究需要寻求一种综合的方法,来对社会和环境变化的时间尺度和历史背景进行整合。通过分析特定时期内中国农村建房的影响因素及相应的管理政策,在了解中国农村建房发展过程的基础上,提出了中国农村宅基地转型趋势的理论假设：随着社会经济的发展,农村宅基地在增加的建设用地总量中所占比例将由高逐渐降低,直到这一比例趋向于一个固定值。最后运用长江沿线样带农村宅基地转型研究结果验证了该理论假设。     

Spatiotemporal changes in agricultural land cover in Nepal over the last 100 years

In order to advance land use and land cover change (LUCC) research in Nepal, it is essential to reconstruct both the spatiotemporal distribution of agricultural land cover as well as scenarios that can explain these changes at the national and regional levels. Because of rapid population growth, the status of agricultural land in Nepal has changed markedly over the last 100 years. Historical data is used in this study, encompassing soils, populations, climatic variables, and topography. Data were revised to a series of 30 m grid cells utilized for agricultural land suitability and allocation models and were analyzed using a suite of advanced geographical tools. Our reconstructions for the spatiotemporal distribution of agricultural land in Nepal reveal an increasing trend between 1910 and 2010 (from 151.2 × 10² km² to 438.8 × 10² km²). This expanded rate of increase in agricultural land has varied between different eco, physiographic, and altitudinal regions of the country, significantly driven by population changes and policies over the period of this investigation. The historical dataset presented in this paper fills an existing gap in studies of agricultural land change and can be applied to other carbon cycle and climate modeling studies, as well as to impact assessments of agricultural land change in Nepal.     

Evolving United States metropolitan land use patterns

We investigate spatial patterns of residential and nonresidential land use for 257 United States metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000, measured with 14 empirical indices. We find that metropolitan areas became denser during the 1990s but developed in more sprawl-like patterns across all other dimensions, on average. By far, the largest changes in our land use metrics occurred in the realm of employment, which became more prevalent per unit of geographic area, but less spatially concentrated and farther from the historical urban core, on average. Our exploratory factor analyses reveal that four factors summarize land use patterns in both years, and remained relatively stable across the two years: intensity, compactness, mixing, and core-dominance. Mean factor scores vary by metropolitan population, water proximity, type, and Census region. Improved measurement of metropolitan land use patterns can facilitate policy and planning decisions intended to minimize the most egregious aspects of urban sprawl.     

Land tenure and forest cover change. The case of southwestern Beni,Bolivian Amazon, 1986–2009

As land use change continues to increase throughout the Amazon basin, there is a pressing need to accurately map, quantify and assess the effects of different factors on forest cover change (FCC). Land tenure may sometimes have important effects on forest cover, yet such effects remain poorly understood in Amazonia, particularly outside Brazil. In this paper we assess whether significant differences in trends of FCC can be partially explained by different land tenure arrangements, using a case study in southwestern Beni (Bolivian Amazon). We examine spatio-temporal dynamics of FCC across four land tenure systems (indigenous titled territory, protected area, logging concession, and private land) by classifying forests using a time-series of Landsat satellite imagery consisting of four dates (1986, 1996, 2001, 2009). Specifically, we unravel (1) trends in early growth and old-growth forest extent, including changes in total cover area, annual change rates, and spatial change dynamics, and (2) trends in old-growth forest fragmentation. To better understand the association between land tenure and FCC, we qualitatively assess the potential role that other underlying and proximate drivers may have had in FCC over the study period. We found that private lands underwent, by far, the largest FCC, that indigenous territories and the protected area had little FCC, and that logging concessions were responsible for the lowest FCC. Our findings suggest that land tenure played a key role in FCC except in private areas, where many other drivers had operated. Our study sheds light into the potential role of land tenure in FCC and has important implications for public policies aimed at socioeconomic development and environmental conservation in the Amazon. We give some policy recommendations drawn from a biocultural conservation perspective that could contribute to implement more inclusive conservation policies in the region.