Indonesia has a large area of degraded land, i.e. 30 million ha, which could potentially be utilized for biofuel plantations. The leguminous tree pongamia (Pongamia pinnata syn. Milettia pinnata) could be utilized to produce biofuel while restoring degraded land. Here, we explore the potential of pongamia as a source of biofuel and for restoring degraded land in Indonesia. Pongamia occurs across Indonesia, in Sumatra, Java, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara and Maluku. It grows to a height of 15–20 m and can grow in a range of environmental conditions. Its seeds can generate up to 40% crude oil by weight. It can help to restore degraded land and improve soil properties. Pongamia also provides wood, fodder, medicine, fertilizer and biogas. Therefore, as a multipurpose species, pongamia holds great potential to combat Indonesia’s energy crisis and to restore much of the degraded land.

The natural and man-made landscape settings in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Northern Pakistan have significantly changed in the last decade due to increasing demands of urbanized populace, migration, two major natural disasters, and climate change. The aim of this study is to analyze land possession, income and land-use diversification of KPK administered Charsadda district. Field data is collected through a sample survey. Furthermore, freely available Landsat 7 satellite images are used to classify land-use classes (e.g. vegetation, built-up) for two different years (e.g. 2005 and 2017) for cross-verification and comparison. The highest 45% of 80% land-owners occupy land-area between 1-10 hectares. Annually, the highest 57.5% of the total farmers / employed in-habitants of surveyed regions earn more than Rs. 100,000 or ~ $ 970 from agriculture activities. About 41.9% land-area covered by agricultural-land is transformed into built-up area since 2007, which is attributed to the increasing demand for buildings and commercial markets. The highest diversification is reported in Naguman area of Charsadda district followed by Rajjar and Niami. Population growth and huge migration of displaced persons from neighboring tribal areas are likely to be few factors which contributed to such a drastic change in land-use pattern since 2007 to 2017. Urgent attention of the policy makers, agricultural experts and society is required to minimize land degradation and to thwart further agricultural-land loss.

The natural and man-made landscape settings in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Northern Pakistan have significantly changed in the last decade due to increasing demands of urbanized populace, migration, two major natural disasters, and climate change. The aim of this study is to analyze land possession, income and land-use diversification of KPK administered Charsadda district. Field data is collected through a sample survey. Furthermore, freely available Landsat 7 satellite images are used to classify land-use classes (e.g., vegetation, built-up) for two different years (e.g., 2005 and 2017) for cross-verification and comparison. The highest 45% of 80% land-owners occupy land-area between 1–10 hectares. Annually, the highest 57.5% of the total farmers / employed in-habitants of surveyed regions earn more than Rs. 100,000 or ~$970 from agriculture activities. About 41.9% land-area covered by agricultural-land is transformed into built-up area since 2007, which is attributed to the increasing demand for buildings and commercial markets. The highest diversification is reported in Naguman area of Charsadda district followed by Rajjar and Niami. Population growth and huge migration of displaced persons from neighboring tribal areas are likely to be few factors which contributed to such a drastic change in land-use pattern since 2007 to 2017. Urgent attention of the policy makers, agricultural experts and society is required to minimize land degradation and to thwart further agricultural-land loss.

Land-use planning plays an important role in agricultural development, however it lacks tools to support planner in proposing land-use planning solutions especially, under saltwater intrusion condition in the coastal regions. This study aims to apply optimization in analyzing land-use solutions for agricultural land-use planning. In which a multi-objective optimization model is developed to optimize land-use area including land-use allocation taking into account socio-economic and environmental factors. The model has been applied in three districts of Soc Trang province, Vietnam (Long Phu, My Xuyen and Tran De) representing three ecological regions including salt water, brackish water and freshwater in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The results showed that two multi-objective optimization scenarios (in terms of profit, labor, environment benefits and risk reduction) have been implemented: (i) Multi-objective optimization of agricultural land-use until 2030 under normal conditions; (ii) Optimizing agricultural land-use until 2030 under climate change conditions similar to the 2016 drought and saltwater intrusion phenomenon in the Mekong Delta. The results showed that the second scenario is the option considered for implementing land-use plan thanks to the balance between good profits and minimizing economic and environmental risk. The land allocation was carried out taking into account household economic, the influence of adjacent production types, local traffic and canal systems factors to allocate optimal land-use areas. The combination of land-use optimization and spatial allocation process can help planners improve the quality of agricultural land-use planning.

Land-use planning review seems relatively lower in publication rate and in coverage of content. This review contributes its part in two dimensions. First, it assesses ability of the popularly growing bibliometric method in tracking the real contribution of publications. Then it summarizes developments in the land use planning literature in three themes - general literature path building, land use planning context, and development of methods. It is observed that bibliometric method rewards information carriage paper more than the original contributors. Key planning context gaps include detachment of the general goal-oriented objective formulations from the basic land use allocation theories and models and certain urban land use optimization objectives even contradict the original though of sustainable city. Key research frontiers include: linking basic land use allocation and utility theories in urban land use planning; shifting the current urban land use planning from spatial optimization to activities into optimizing flow resources to available spatial configurations; evaluating existing built environment for optimality; transferring knowledge from rural land-use planning to urban land use planning. In method development, the key frontier would be advancing the current loosely coupled methods into more integrated systems.

The central coast is one of the importantly livable regions in China, and green land plays a meaningful role in improving human settlements through regulating ecosystem services. However, the research on spatiotemporal heterogeneity of green land in different urbanized areas are still lacking in this region, which limits the timeliness of reporting on the land-surface thermal properties of residential environment from green land perspective. To address this issue, the synergistic methodology of “artificial numerical technology -- urban interior mixed pixel classification -- surface radiation energy balance model” was applied to investigate the green land change and its impact on human settlements in Rizhao region, which is known for its coastal ecology and greenery in China and obtained the United Nations habitat award. Main conclusions of this study are below: (1) Although total green land decreased by 474.05 km2, resulting in a decrease of 9.17% in its share of the entire study area from 2000-2022 during the urbanization process, but the greening levels improved within the built-up area, with the greening proportion of 25.34% in 2000 and 42.98 km2 in 2022. (2) Differences in green land at different urbanized regions were first observed, namely, urban greening rate was 37.78% in the old urban areas of 2022, while it was up to 46.43% in new urban areas. More attention was paid to the construction of urban green space during urban expansion, which will inevitably bring better visual and comfort experience to residents. (3) Thermal comfort indicators for urban residents were evaluated in latent heat flux (0-457.83 W/m2), sensible heat flux (0-645.09 W/m2), total available energy (254.07-659.42 W/m2) and others. (4) The lowered cooling temperature effect in the middle, high green land density region was 1.05 ℃ and 2.12 ℃ compared to the low-density region, and the average air temperature was 25.86 ℃. Also, spatial patterns of hot and cold uncomfortable areas were displayed in this study. Overall, this study provides the meaningfully practical reference for exploring the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of green land and its impact on residents' environments from the perspective of land-surface thermal properties in coastal areas of China and around the world.

The water quality of the river is becoming deteriorated due to human interference. It is essential to understand the relationship between human activities and land-use types to assess the water quality of a region. GIS has the latest tool for analyzing the spatial correlation. Land use land cover and change detection is the best illustration to show the human interactions on land features. The study assessed water quality index of upper Ganga River near Haridwar, Uttarakhand and spatially correlated them with changing land use to reach a logical conclusion. At the upper course of Ganga along 78 Km long from Kaudiyala to Bhogpur, water samples were collected from five stations. For water quality index the physicochemical parameters like pH, EC, DO, TDS, CaCO3-, CaCO3, Cl¯, Ca++, Mg++, Na+, K+, F-, Fe2+ were considered. The result of the spatial analysis was evaluated through error estimation and spatial correlation. The root mean square error between spatial land use and water quality index of selected sampling sites was estimated as 0.1443. The spatial correlation between land-use change and site-wise differences in water quality index has also shown a high positive correlation with R² = 0.8455. The degree of positive correlation and root mean square error has strongly indicated that the water quality of the river at the upper course of Ganga is highly impacted through human activities.

The ejido system in Mexico based on communal land was transformed for private ownership due to neoliberal trends during 1990. This research describes the evolution of Mexican land policies that changed the ejido system into private development to answer why land tenure change is shaping urban growth. To demonstrate this, municipalities of San Andrés Cholula and Ocoyucan were selected as a case study. Within this context, we evaluated how much ejido land is being urbanized due to real estate market forces and what type of urbanization model is created. These two areas represent different development scales: S.A. Cholula where its ejidos were expropriated as part of a regional urban development plan; and Ocoyucan where its ejidos and rural land were reached by private developers without local planning. To analyze both municipalities, historical satellite images from Google Earth were used with GRASS GIS 7.4 and corrected with QGIS 2.18. We found that privatization of ejidos fragmented and segregated the rural world for the construction of massive gated-communities. Therefore, a disturbing land tenure change occurred during the last 30 years, hence this research questions the role of local authorities in permitting land use change without regulations or local planning. The resulting urbanization model is a private sector development that isolates rural communities in their own territories, for which we provide recommendations.

In the last two centuries, land use change (LUC) has been the most important direct changes driver for terrestrial ecosystems. To contrast the consequent ecosystems degradation, forward-looking spatial policies and target landscape and land-use planning processes, promoting a sustainable land use change, are needed. The present paper proposes a framework of action including different landscape planning and ecological approaches: from the spatial modelling to recognize the LUC and build different scenarios, to the ecosystem services (ESs) assessment to evaluate the possible environmental impacts. Three different scenarios were built: Trend, No-Tillage and Energy crops. The Sediment Delivery Ratio and Carbon Storage and Sequestration ESs were assessed and compared for each scenario. The aim of the paper is to support decision-makers and local communities into the landscape planning process. Results show that a regional development in line with past trend could lead to further land degradation. Instead, the two scenarios proposed in compliance with EU policies, could bring benefits only if related to moderate LUCs and respecting the naturally grass-vegetated land. From the local to global scale, a guided and shared LUC management allows implementing sustainable development, basing on a deep knowledge of physical-environmental but also social and economic issues.

This paper considered the issue of agricultural fields boundary recognition in satellite images. A novel algorithm based on the aggregated history of vegetation index data obtained via open satellite data, Sentinel-2, was proposed. The proposed algorithm included several basic steps, namely the detection of parcel regions on aggregated index data; the calculation of aggregated edge maps; the segmentation of parcel regions using the edges obtained; the computation of connected components and their contour extraction. In this paper, we showed that the use of aggregated vegetation index data and boundary maps allow for much more accurate agricultural field segmentation compared to the instant vegetation index approach. The quality of segmentation within regions of Russia and the Ukraine was estimated. The dataset that was used and Python implementation of the proposed algorithm were provided.

Land Surface Temperature is a one of the key variable of Global climate changes and model which estimate radiating budget in heat balance as control of climate model. It is a major influenced factor by the ability of the surface emissivity. In this study, were used Landsat 8 satellite image that have Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor to calculate Land Surface Temperature through geospatial technology over Ampara district, Sri Lanka. The Land Surface Temperature was estimated with respect to Land Surface Emissivity and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index values determined from the Red and Near Infrared channels. Land Surface Emissivity was processed directly by the thermal Infrared bands. Pixels based calculation were used to effort at LANDSAT 8 images that thermal Band 10 various dates in this study. The results were achievable to compute Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Land Surface Emissivity, and Land Surface Temperature with applicable manner to compare with land use/ land cover data. It determines and predicts the changes of surface temperature to favorable to decision making process for the society. Study area faces seasonal drought in Sri Lanka, the prediction method that how land can be efficiently used with the present condition. Therefore, the Land Surface Temperature estimation can prove whether new irrigation systems for agricultural activities or can transformed source of energy into useful form that introducing solar hubs for energy production in future.

The consequences of growing urbanization can be perceived in multiple levels around the globe: overpopulated living conditions, water and air pollution, loss of open space, costly transportation infrastructure, food shortages, fires and floods. The Houston metropolitan area is an example of fast urban growth, with a population increase of more than sixteen percent in seven years, going from 5.8 million people in 2010 to 6.9 million in 2017 [1]. By 2045, the robust growth of the region is projected to lead to the addition of approximately five hundred square miles of developed area, including an estimated six million parking spaces, seven hundred eighty million square feet of non-residential uses, and three and a half billion square feet of residential use [2]. The accelerated development, in addition to physical features, geomorphic processes and human activities in the region are believed to have caused Houston to suffer through over fifty devastating floods since its settlement, despite some successful flood damage reduction projects. The present study focused on the potential outcomes of an increased use of green infrastructure in comparable urban areas, and its effects on flooding volume. Results from the research revealed that not only these measures would likely improve the performance of existing urban drainage systems and attenuate flood incidence in the area, but would also promote connectivity between areas otherwise detached or only accessible by car, improving walkability and incentivizing engagement in outdoor activities.

Rapid urbanization has dramatically spurred the economic development over the past three decades, especially in China, but has nevertheless had negative impacts on natural resources since it is an irreversible process. Thus, it is essential to timely monitor and quantitatively analysis the changes in land use over time and to identify the landscape pattern variation related to growth mode in different period. This study aims at inspecting spatiotemporal characteristics of landscape pattern respond to land use changes in Xuzhou city during the period from 1985 to 2015. In this connection, we proposed a new spectral index, named the Normalized Difference Enhanced Urban Index (NDEUI), which combines data from NTL (Nighttime light) from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) with annual maximum Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) to reduce the detection confusion between urban areas and barren land, as well as follows. NDEUI-assisted Random Forests algorithm was implemented to obtain the land use/land cover (LULC) maps of Xuzhou in 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015, respectively. Here, four different periods viz. 1985–1995, 1995–2005, 2005–2015 and 1985–2015 are chosen for the change analysis of land use and landscape pattern. The results indicated that the urban area has increased by about 30.65%, 10.54%, 68.77%, and 143.75% during the four periods mentioned above at the main expense of agricultural land, respectively. The spatial trend maps revealed that continuous transition from other land use types into urban land has appeared a dual-core development mode throughout the urbanization process, located at the new city region and the Jiawang district, mainly affected by the construction of new city region, freeway and the high railway station. Furthermore, we quantified the patch complexity, aggregation, connectivity and diversity of landscape employing a number of landscape metrics to represent the changes of landscape pattern at both class and landscape level, affected by urbanization during the study period. The results showed that with regard to the four aspects of landscape pattern, there were considerable differences among the four years, mainly owing to the increasing dominance of urbanized land. Spatiotemporal variation of landscape pattern was also conducted on the basis of subgrids in 900 m × 900 m. Combined with the land use changes and spatiotemporal variation of landscape pattern, it can be concluded that different urbanization modes and intensity result in variously the spatiotemporal evolution of landscape patterns. For Xuzhou city, the urban growth mainly appeared a leapfrog mode alone both sides of the roads during the period of 1985 to 1995, and then shifted into edge-expansion mode during the period from 1995 to 2005, whereas the edge-expansion and leapfrog modes coexisted for the period from 2005 to 2015. The high valuable spatiotemporal information generated utilizing RS and GIS in this study may give assistance to urban planners and policymakers to well understand urban dynamics and evaluate their spatiotemporal and environmental impacts at a local level for the sake of sustainable urban planning in the future.

Abstract: Changes in forest landscapes have been connected with human activity for centuries, which can be considered as one of the main driving forces of change in the global perspective. The spatial distribution of forests changes along with the geopolitical situation, demographic changes, intensification of agriculture, urbanization or changes in the land use policy. However, due to the limited availability of historical data, the driving forces of changes in forest landscapes are most often considered in relation to recent decades, without taking into account long-term analyzes. The aim of this paper is to determine the impact of natural and socio-economic factors on changes in forest landscapes within the protected area – Ślęża Landscape Park and its buffer zone in the aspect of long-term analyzes covering the period of 140 years (1883-2013). The comparison of historical and current maps, demographic data on 4 different periods as well as natural and location factors by using the ArcGIS software allowed analyzing selected driving forces of forest landscape transformations. We took into account natural factors like altitude, slope, exposure of the hillside and socio-economic drivers like population changes, distances to centers of municipalities, main roads and built-up areas.

The most extensive urban growths in the next 30 years are expected to occur in developing countries. Lagos, Nigeria - Africa’s second most populous megacity- is a prime example. To achieve more sustainable and resilient cities, there is a need for modeling the urban growth patterns of major cities and analyzing their implications. In this study, the urban growth of Lagos state was modeled using the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network for the transition modeling and the Markov Chain analysis for the change prediction, achieving a model accuracy of 81.8%. An innovative visual validation of the model results using the ArcGIS was combined with kappa correlation statistics. The results show that by 2031, built-up areas will be the most spatially extensive LULC class in the study area with percentage coverage of 34.1% as opposed to 9% in 1986. The coverage of bare areas is also expected to increase by 53% between 2016 and 2031. Conversely, 24.9% and 68.3% loss of forestlands and wetlands respectively, are expected between 2016 and 2031. In view of the 11^th goal of SDGs which focuses on achieving sustainable cities and communities, the objectives of African Union’s Agenda 2063, and based on the urban growth trends observed, the study recommends a prioritization of vertical expansion as opposed to the current horizontal urban growth trends in the study area.

The relocation of Indonesia's capital to the IKN (Ibukota Negara) Nusantara in East Kalimantan is leading to significant changes in land use, shifting from natural vegetation and agriculture to urban infrastructure. This transition brings about economic diversification and urban expansion, but it also raises concerns about its impact on society, the economy, and the environment. The rapid development affects biodiversity conservation, food security, and the livelihoods of rural and indigenous communities, leading to conflicts across social and economic dimensions. This research uses qualitative and quantitative data to examine the socio-economic and environmental changes in the IKN Nusantara area from 2003 to 2023. The findings show a notable increase in built-up areas, indicating urbanization and a decrease in agricultural land. The study discusses the implications for local populations and ecosystems, emphasizing the need for inclusive governance, community participation, and conflict resolution. It also proposes a comprehensive policy framework that promotes sustainable land management, recognizes indigenous and local rights, and fosters inclusive economic growth to respect Indonesia's rich environmental and cultural heritage.

This article illuminates the reception and transformation of Ippen一遍(1234-1289)’s religious tenets and practices by Enju Kato加藤円住 (1919-2021) and his temple Shōjōkō-ji清浄光寺. While Enju Kato asserts that his life has been dedicated to adhering and enacting Ippen's concept of "renunci-ation," he has reinterpreted this concept based on his personal experiences and comprehension. Second, Enju Kato and Shōjōkō-ji have inherited some of Ippen's religious practices yet adapted these to align with contemporary settings. This article presents a case study discussing the ac-ceptance and transformation of doctrines and practices of jishū時宗 in contemporary era, which has been overlooked by academia thus far.

Despite increased hurricane intensity, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast has experienced dramatic coastal population increase of 24.5% from 2000 to 2016. However, in coastal Louisiana areas with dramatic wetland loss, parishes have experienced population declines and lower rates of population growth. Therefore, understanding the magnitude of the effect of wetland loss as a main driver in population loss in coastal Louisiana is critical. Using regression analysis, this study finds that wetland loss has a significant and persistent negative effect on population growth in coastal Louisiana. This effect resulted in a reduction in the population growth rate in coastal parishes over time. A counterfactual simulation was conducted to estimate the potential population size in the absence of wetland loss from 1990 to 2021. On average, the effect of 1 hectare of wetland lost causes a reduction of approximately 1000 persons. This indicates that for the year 2021, the population was approximately 18% lower than the population that would have existed in the absence of wetland loss. This research underscores the role of wetlands in providing direct and indirect benefits to people in coastal Louisiana that are ultimately reflected in its population levels.

Research Highlights: (1) Reed canary grass (RCG) is analysed in Sweden compared to willow and poplar for 2001-2020 (2) Each crop presents a different land-use and climatic profile (3) Average yield records of reed canary grass are similar to willow and poplar (4) There are divergences between trial-based and commercial yields (5) Existing LUC patterns suggest meadow>RCG and RCG>cereal (6) RCG land area is very sensitive to policy incentives. Background and objectives: RCG is an alternative crop for biomass-to-energy due to high yield and frost tolerance. We assess the cultivation in Sweden by using an extensive compilation of data, with emphasis on the extension of the cultivation, areas planted, climatic profile, land use patterns and yield levels. Material and methods: All RCG plantations are analysed for 2001-2020. A geostatistical analysis is performed to characterize where is cultivated and the land uses associated. Climatic, productivity and yield profiles are compared to willow and poplar plantations, from experiments and from commercial plantations. Results: The results show that the cultivation of reed canary grass expanded after 2005, with a maximum of 800 ha in 2009 to then decrease to the current levels of about 550 ha. It is mainly grown in colder climatic areas, with lower agricultural productivity than willow and poplar. Mean yields from trials are 6 odt ha-1 yr-1; commercial yields are 3.5 odt ha-1 yr-1. RCG replace meadow land and is replaced by cereals, when abandoned. Conclusions: Reed canary grass is an interesting alternative, growing on colder areas but on similar yield levels than other energy crops. The cultivation is more sensitive to policy incentives

This study spatially estimates degraded lands in Indonesia that have limited functions for food production, carbon storage, and conservation of biodiversity and native vegetation, and examines their suitability to grow biodiesel species (Calophyllum inophyllum, Pongamia pinnata and Reutealis trisperma) and biomass species (Calliandra calothyrsus and Gliricidia sepium). Results showed that Indonesia has ∼3.5 million ha of degraded lands potentially suitable for these species. With the all-five-species scenario, these lands had the potential to produce 1105 PJ yr⁻¹ of biomass and 3 PJ yr⁻¹ of biodiesel. With the biodiesel-only-species scenario, these lands showed the potential to produce 10 PJ yr⁻¹ of biodiesel. Despite this energy potential, however, the land sizes were too small to support economies of scale for biofuel production. The study findings contribute to identifying lands with limited functions, modeling biofuel-species growth on regional lands and estimating carbon stocks of restored degraded lands in Indonesia.

The community of farmers in land tenure have different institutional in terms of mastery of the land. In Indonesia there were generally institutional governing the utilization of land for mastery permanently, but there were also institutional governing dominion land in turn. This research aimed to chart institutional pattern characteristic mastery of the land inheritance system passes in, andanalyzeits contribution to sustainability of agriculture in the economic, social and ecological. Research method using case studies, with unit case a subdistrict in Gowa, South Sulawesi province, Indonesia. The results showed that institutional land pattern mastery system passes the inheritance patterns of alternation that has in effect hereditary, pattern rotation established by the heir land management patterns, depending on the number of beneficiaries, as well as not having managed to land fragmentation, so the scale of farming land, conditions can be maintained , the land was slanted so given a terracing, planting process was carried out by means of mutual. Neither found that institutional land pattern mastery system passes the inheritance had been contributing the sustainability of agriculture in social and ecological, but have yet to fully contribute to the sustainability of agriculture in economy.

Indigenous traditional land uses, including hunting, fishing, sacred activies and land-based education at Red Sucker Lake First Nation (RSLFN) in Manitoba, Canada are impacted by mining. Traditional land use maps and interviews were undertaken with 21 Indigenous people from RSLFN, showing many traditional land uses are concentrated on greenstone belts. The interviews revealed that mining exploration has resulted in large petroleum spills, noise distress, personal property destruction, wildlife die-offs and animal population declines, which negatively impact RSLFN’s traditional land use practices, ecosystem integrity, and community health. Red Sucker Lake First Nation (RSLFN) people want their territories’ land and water protected for traditional uses, culture and ecological integrity. Towards this goal, their Island Lake Tribal Council sought support for an Indigenous-protected and conserved area (IPCA) in their territory outside of existing mining claims, but without success. Governments need to partner with Indigenous nations to reach their biodiversity targets, particularly considering northern Canada’s peatlands, including those in Island Lake, surpassing the Amazon forests for carbon storage. Critical minerals and gold’s role in renewable energy and geopolitics have colonial governments undermining Indigenous rights, climate stabilization and biodiversity. With extractivism prioritized, the environmental impacts of mining extend to not only the mines but also the extensive development required to facilitate extraction including roads, hydro and ports to ship the minerals with proposals for a national Northern Corridor to run nearby.

In the future, the pursuit of high-quality economic development and a focus on ecological environmental protection in China will inevitably result in significant conflicts between land use and ecological land use. The challenge lies in achieving sustainable high-quality development while simultaneously protecting the ecological environment, optimizing the land use structure, and promoting a harmonious relationship between humans and the land. These challenges are faced by all regions. Land use conflicts primarily occur in peri-urban areas characterized by prominent economic development and urban agglomeration. Previous studies have mainly focused on analyzing the effects of land use on habitat quality during intense urbanization. However, it is important to recognize that land pressure encompasses economic, ecological, and social aspects. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the spatial conflict of land use and the impact on habitat quality in Ankang, a city that has been advocating ecological protection for the past two decades, this study aims to objectively analyze the spatial trends in land use changes in such cities. Additionally, it aims to provide insights for the harmonious development of land use in eco-region-oriented cities. Using the SSP-RCP scenarios provided by CMIP6, this paper employs a system analysis method, PLUS model, InVEST model, and land use conflict measurement model to dynamically simulate the future habitat quality and spatial conflict patterns of land use in Ankang City. The study explores the spatial coupling effect of both factors under different scenarios. The results indicate the following:(1) Under different future shared socio-economic path scenarios, land use intensity and land conflict levels follow the order of SSP585 (high forcing scenario), SSP370 (medium to high forcing scenario), SSP245 (medium forcing scenario), and SSP126 (low forcing scenario), with intensity and conflict decreasing accordingly. (2) The overall development trend in Ankang City reveals an intensification of land use conflicts and a decrease in habitat quality. The expansion rate of construction land is increasing and exhibiting aggregation, while agricultural land area is expanding and forest land area is continuously decreasing. (3) Land use intensity exhibits a significant positive correlation with land conflict levels, while land conflict levels demonstrate a significant negative correlation with habitat quality. These findings suggest that land use has had some impact on the ecological environment, with indications of habitat degradation. Even in Ankang, where ecological development is highly valued, the city will gradually face conflicts between ecological protection and economic development in future scenarios. The study highlights that Ankang's future development space will be constrained within the context of environmental protection, leading to greater land use conflicts in urban and surrounding areas. Consequently, the quality of habitats will inevitably decline. Therefore, it is crucial to allocate sufficient space for economic development while simultaneously prioritizing ecological protection. This approach will ensure a healthy economic development trajectory and foster a harmonious relationship between humans and the land.

Agriculture and farming worldwide are responsible for numerous environmental threats, including degradation of land and water resources depletion. Underlining the dynamic interaction between bio-physical and socio-economic drivers is the key towards a more sustainable land and water management. With regard to a highly developed agricultural area in southern Italy, multi-regression models were developed to interpret the observed inter-annual variability of cropped land. Main drivers related to Common Agricultural Policy support, product market prices, crop yield and irrigation water availability were investigated. The adopted models revealed the different weighs of each driver. The findings reported the role that direct payments played in supporting the extension of irrigated crops, such as processing tomato. Likewise, the models pointed to decoupled payment scheme as the most important driver of change in the crop pattern over the last years.

Our work is regarding the analysis of land use changes, in the light of “saving soil” against the expansion due to unearned plus value of land: The loss of natural and agricultural surface in front of the expanding urban environment is a critical aspect of unsustainability of urban development, especially in the way it was carried out in the past decades. The measure of the physical transition of land use and characters from a more natural condition of land surface to a new artificial one, joint with a parallel analysis of the increase of land value due to such change is nowadays a major land-policy tool. The interplay of urban economics regulation with planning, reveals new key issues in urban governance and environmental preservation. In this paper it will be shown some experiment about the impact assessment of soil take, related with the seek of valorization of property inside the planning process. Our paper reports as well about the experimental activity carried out inside the MITO Lab of the Polytechnic of Bari, where reports about property values and environmental values have been produced, specially looking at the reality of the Apulia, a southern Italian Region, that is rich of farmlands and coastlines, often invaded by constructions with a severe loss of nature, landscape and ecosystems services.

Supervised land-use/land-cover (LULC) classifications are typically conducted using class assignment rules derived from a set of multiclass training samples. Consequently, classification accuracy varies with the training data set and is thus associated with uncertainty. In this study, we propose a bootstrap resampling and reclassification approach that can be applied for assessing not only the uncertainty in classification results of the bootstrap-training data sets, but also the classification uncertainty of individual pixels in the study area. Two measures of pixel-specific classification uncertainty, namely the maximum class probability and Shannon entropy, were derived from the class probability vector of individual pixels and used for the identification of unclassified pixels. Unclassified pixels that are identified using the traditional chi-square threshold technique represent outliers of individual LULC classes, but they are not necessarily associated with higher classification uncertainty. By contrast, unclassified pixels identified using the equal-likelihood technique are associated with higher classification uncertainty and they mostly occur on or near the borders of different land-cover.

A multi-decadal change analysis of the irrigation ponds in Taoyuan, Taiwan was conducted by using multi-source data including digitized ancient maps, declassified single-band CORONA satellite images, and multispectral SPOT images. Supervised LULC classifications were conducted using four textural features derived from the single-band CORONA images and spectral features derived from SPOT images. Post-classification analysis revealed that the number of irrigation ponds in the study area decreased during the post-World War II farmland consolidation period (1945 – 1965) and the subsequent industrialization period (1970 – 2000). However, efforts on restoration of irrigation ponds in recent years have resulted in gradual increases in the number (9%) and total area (12%) of irrigation ponds in the study area.

Present study on land use land cover analysis and taluka wise combination of cropped area, carried out in Beed district of Maharashtra state in India and studied 11 talukas of the district. Secondary data on land use land cover and area in various crops has been collected, compiled and analyzed from various secondary sources. Simple descriptive statistics used to examine the agricultural land use land cover and J.C. Weaver’s crop combination technique was used for taluka wise analysis of crop combinations and on the basis of highest to smallest area engaged in particular crop, crops have been ranked. The study showed that, in the district as a whole, percentage of uncultivated land other than fallow was about 46 percent as compare to net sown area is only 35 percent in total geographical area (1063855ha) of Beed district. The study further revealed that about 42 percent area engaged in food crops and about 58 percent area occupied by nonfood crops, which includes cereals (25%), cotton (19%), pulses (13%), oilseed (12%), sugarcane (5%) and fruits and vegetables (3%). Results of Weaver’s crop combination technique showed that the Wadwani taluka demarcated as most diversified taluka by means of maximum number (sixteen) of crops combinations with the lowest variance value (14) found in the present investigation. Further, the study revealed that the high crop diversity found in Dharur taluka with eighteen crop combinations and the taluka has given first rank amongst others. To derive the crop diversity ranking, taluka wise maximum to minimum number of crop combinations derived in different talukas and given ranks accordingly. The study concluded that, agricultural land use analysis is essential for solving and optimizing the land use problem, maintaining socio-ecological balance, best utilization of scarce resources. The authors enlightened that the rational use of agricultural land has important for food security and biodiversity which increase the productivity and profitability of the agriculture sector and it indicates the decision making ability of farmers in study area.

Floods are the most frequent and devastating disasters in Bangladesh. The riverine islands, known as char-lands, are particularly vulnerable to flooding. As flooding poses a significant threat to the lives and livelihoods of residents, especially farmers, it is crucial to understand how they perceive flood risk and assess their adaptation strategies in this geographically susceptible context. However, the existing literature has not adequately addressed these issues. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the factors influencing farmers' perceived flood risk and their assessments of flood adaptation. In a survey of 359 farmers in Bangladesh's char-land region, located in the Chowhali sub-district of Sirajganj district, we used the protection motivation theory (PMT) to measure farmers' perceived flood risk and adaptation assessments. Multiple regression analysis was employed to identify factors influencing them. Farmers prioritized the risk to livelihoods (production and income) over psychological aspects (health and diseases). Larger farms, more flood experience, and greater risk awareness are associated with higher overall flood risk perception; and better flood adaptation, indicating higher self-efficacy, response efficacy, and response cost among farmers. Farmers perceived lower flood risk in exchange for greater house distance from the river and more trust in government actions. Hence, strengthening campaigns and programs is crucial to understanding flood risk in char-lands for improved adaptation to floods. The study highlights the application of PMT to assess farmers' perceptions of flood risk and their attitudes towards adaptation, suggesting further research opportunities.

Taxes on the consumption of certain products have played a key role in public revenue analysis in European countries. This work aims to assess the differences in tax planning on new non-combustion products across some European territories. Through theoretical analysis, the paper has three distinct aspects. Firstly, we show the taxpayer profile in different countries. Secondly, the study analyzes the risks for the health system and the individual. Thirdly, the design of the land tax is based on previous experience and planning in Europe. This paper concludes with a case study for different countries: 1) Spain “vapers” and “smokers”, where the analysis is based on micro-data from the European Health Interview Survey 2020. 2) Sweden with the analysis of snus, shows it as a practice to reach economic savings while decreasing economic costs thanks to the nudging of consumers towards better products. The results show taxation and, specially, land taxation, should consider differences in planning in the case of new products, such as the non-combustion products, given the user per capita income and the potential lower health risks involved.

Nitrogen is crucial for plant physiology due to the fact that plants consume a significant amount of nitrogen during the development period. Nitrogen supports the root, leaf, stem, branch, shoot and fruit development of plants. At the same time, it also increases flowering. To monitor the vegetation nitrogen concentration, one of the best indicator developed in the literature is Normalized Difference Nitrogen Index (NDNI) which is based on the usage of the spectral bands: 1510 and 1680 nm. from Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) region of electromagnetic spectrum. However, majority of the remote sensing sensors like cameras and/or satellites do not have a SWIR sensor due to the high costs. Many vegetation indexes like NDVI, EVI, MNLI, have been developed in also VNIR region to monitor the greenness and healthy of the crops. However these indexes are not very correlated to the nitrogen content. Therefore, in this study, a novel method is developed which transforms the estimated VNIR band indexes to NDNI by using a regression method between a group of VNIR indexes and NDNI. Training is employed by using VNIR band indexes as input and NDNI as output which are both calculated from the same location. After training, 0.93 correlation is achieved. Therefore, by using only VNIR band sensors, it is possible to estimate the nitrogen content of the plant with high accuracy.

Aquifer water is the key staple to develop successful sustainable agricultural activity in newly reclaimed areas in Egypt. Monitoring irrigation water quality is necessary for a proper planning of this exhaustible resources. This work aims to evaluate the groundwater quality in the western newly reclaimed areas of Beni-Suef governorate. Fifty aquifer water sample were collected from wells scattered in the arid western Beni-Suef fringes during May of 2022. Water chemical analyses were conducted to estimate the parameters of Irrigation Water Quality Index (IWQI) namely the Electrical Conductivity (EC), Sodium (Na+), Chloride (Cl-), Bicarbonate (HCO3-) and the Adjusted percentage of Absorbed Sodium (SARo). The Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) technique used to map the spatial distribution of aquifer water chemical characteristics and IWQI. The results showed that EC values were high in the south of the study area and decreased at its north and east borders. The results showed that the average of dissolved cations and anions were 236.4, 102, 77.5, 106.2, 309.6, 148.1 and 113 meq/l for Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+, K+, SO42-, HCO3-, and Cl-, respectively. Regarding to IWQI, its' values ranged from 28 to 81. Two-thirds of the study area classified as having moderate limitations for sustainable irrigation purposes. Furthermore, one-thirds of the area classified as having high restrictions.

The suppression of natural spaces due to the urban sprawl and increase of the built and agricultural environments has impacted the water resources quality, especially in areas with high population density, as the metropolitan regions. Considering the advance in Brazilian environmental legal framework, the present study aims to verify whether land use has still significantly affected water quality, through a case study in the Stones River watershed, a peri-urban river basin at a metropolitan region, Brazil. Analysis of physical-chemical indicators, collected at several sample points with different land-use (urban areas, commercial forestry, riparian forestry, mixed vegetation, pasture, and sugar cane plantation) at different seasons of the year (dry and rainy) were carried out. As a result, it was verified some statistically significant spatiotemporal effects on the of water quality caused associated to the land-use. In conclusion, in spite of the advances in the Brazilian law, land-use has still significantly affected the water quality, demanding public policies and decisions, so that effective compliance with legal guidelines is ensured.

The threat of fine particulate matter concentration (PM2.5) is increasing globally, Tackling this issue requires an accurate understanding of its trends and drivers. The article investigates the PM2.5 characteristics of 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000-2018 based on multiscale geographically weighted regression(MGWR), and the results show that（1）previous studies based on classical MGWR models may be somewhat unstable, while MGWR can reflect the scale of influence of different variables on the dependent variable, and its regression results are more reliable.（2）PM2.5 is very sensitive to carbon emission(CE) factors, and there is a high degree of spatial heterogeneity, and the influence scale of location is the smallest among all variables, close to the municipal scale.（3）In 2000, the constant term all, IS, OFT, CE, and LT positively affect PM2.5, while GDP (jurisdiction) and UR negatively affect PM2.5; in 2010, the constant term all, GDP (jurisdiction), IS, OFT and LT positively affect PM2.5, while UR and CE negatively affect PM2.5; in 2018 the constant term all, IS, OFT and CE factors positively affect PM2.5, and GDP (jurisdiction), UR and LT negatively affect PM2.5.

Quantity-intensity characteristics are among conventional approaches for studying potassium dynamics and its availability; this was assessed to determine availability in four districts: namely, Sodo Zuria, Damot Gale, Damot Sore, and Boloso Sore at three different land use type viz., enset-coffee, crop land, and grazing land. There was water soluble, ammonium acetate, nitric acid extractable potassium, exchangeable potassium, and non-exchangeable potassium studied in soil samples, which were collected from 0-20 cm depth of each land type. The study revealed that water soluble and ammonium acetate extractable potassium concentrations ranged from 0.04 to 0.42 cmolKg-1 soils enset-coffee and grazing land use types, respectively. The study showed that exchangeable potassium constituted the highest proportion of available potassium, while the proportion of water soluble potassium was found to be the lowest. In this study, non-exchangeable potassium concentrations varied from 0.10 to 0.04cmolKg-1soils for enset-coffee, and crop and grazing land use type. Furthermore, available potassium and exchangeable potassium concentrations were positively correlated with OC(r=0.95***), cation exchange capacity, and sand and clay(r=0.98***). In addition, the K dynamics as impacted by land use types found that the highest change in exchangeable potassium (0.31cmolkg-1soils) and potential buffering capacity (1.79cmolkg-1soils) were noted in crop land use types, whereas the lowest change(1.26cmolkg-1 soils) was observed in the enset-coffee system, The varying properties, potassium status, dynamic and land use type of soils identified in the study areas provided adequate information to design soil potassium management options and further research about the soil in each site. Therefore, application of site specific soil fertility management practices and research can improve soil potassium status and quantity intensity parameters to sustain crop productive soils.

The main focus of this paper is to analyze the effect of local public finance on spatial land use through economic models and empirical evidence from Israel. The theoretic models extends the Alonso-Mill-Muth model by incorporating local public finance. The first finding is that steady population growth provides a channel for land capitalization through the mechanism of long term land property right. This implies a possible conflict of interest if ownership of land leasing revenue and the ad valorem property tax are not consistent. The empirical section examines one of the implications derived from the models highlighting a possible inconsistency between central and local governments due to land ownership centralization. This causes local tax revenue inequality among Israeli municipalities. Statistical evidence shows that cities with a larger share business land use can generate more tax without assistance from the central government, and are therefore more fiscal independent. Fiscal status has a significant effect on the planning time of residential construction. Municipalities with higher local tax revenues have shorter planning time(higher probability of acceptance) conditional on the plan’s size and other features.

This study investigates how the determinants including risk preference affect farmers’ decision to adopt SLM practices in upland areas of Vietnam. Empirical data collected through in-depth interviews with 200 farmers in Na Ri district, Bac Kan province were used. The factors affecting SLM adoption of farmers in Na Ri district were examined by the 2SLS or IV-Probit model. The estimated 2SLS regression indicated that there is a set of factors affecting SLM adoption, namely, relative risk aversion, farming experience, farm size, knowledge of SLM, membership in farmers’ organization, number of labors, and slope of farm land. Specifically, relative risk aversion had a negative effect on SLM practices adoption. The farmers who are less risk averse are more likely to adopt more SLM practices. This implies that reducing farmer’ risk exposure could promote SLM practices. This result is also helpful for policymakers to understand farmers’ behaviors and promote the diffusion of SLM practices across regions on a large scale.

Land surface temperature (LST) is a key variable in surface-atmosphere energy and water exchanges. The main goals of this study are to (i) evaluate the LST of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim and ERA5 reanalyses over Iberian Peninsula using the Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF) product and to (ii) understand the main drivers of the LST errors in the reanalysis. Simulations with the ECMWF land-surface model in offline mode (uncoupled) were carried out over the Iberian Peninsula and compared with the reanalysis data. Several sensitivity simulations were performed in a confined domain centered in Southern Portugal to investigate potential sources of the LST errors. The Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) fraction of green vegetation cover (FCover) and the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) Land Cover dataset were explored. We found a general underestimation of daytime LST and slightly overestimation at night-time. The results indicate that there is still room for improvement in the simulation of LST in ECMWF products. Still, ERA5 presents an overall higher quality product in relation to ERA-Interim. Our analysis suggested a relation between the large daytime cold bias and vegetation cover differences between (ERA5 and CGLS FCocver) with a correlation of -0.45. The replacement of the low and high vegetation cover by those of ESA-CCI provided an overall reduction of the large Tmax biases during summer. The increased vertical resolution of the soil at the surface, has a positive impact, but much smaller when compared with the vegetation changes. The sensitivity of the vegetation density parameter, that currently depends on the vegetation type, provided further proof for a needed revision of the vegetation in the model, as there is a reasonable correlation between this parameter and the Tmax mean errors when using the ESA-CCI vegetation cover (while the same correlation cannot be reproduced with the original model vegetation). Our results support the hypothesis that vegetation cover is one of the main drivers of the LST summertime cold bias in ERA5 over Iberian Peninsula.

This study focuses on the ability of the global land data assimilation system LDAS-Monde to improve the representation of land surface variables (LSVs) over Burkina Faso through the joint assimilation of satellite derived Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) and Leaf Area Index (LAI) from January 2001 to June 2018. The LDAS-Monde offline system is forced by the latest European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) atmospheric reanalysis ERA5, leading to a 0.25° x 0.25° spatial resolution reanalysis of the LSVs. Within LDAS-Monde, SSM and LAI observations from the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) are assimilated using the CO2-responsive version of the ISBA (Interactions between Soil, Biosphere and Atmosphere) land surface model (LSM). First, it is shown that ERA5 better represents precipitation and incoming solar radiation than ERA-Interim former reanalysis from ECMWF. Results of two experiments are compared: open-loop simulation (i.e. no assimilation) and analysis (i.e. joint assimilation of SSM and LAI). After jointly assimilating SSM and LAI, it is noticed that the assimilation is able to impact soil moisture in the first top soil layers (the first 20 cm), and also in deeper soil layers (from 20 cm to 60 cm and below). The assimilation is able to improve the simulation of both SSM and LAI. For LAI in particular, the southern region of the domain (dominated by a Sudan-Guinean climate) highlights a strong impact of the assimilation compared to the other two sub-regions of Burkina Faso (dominated by Sahelian and Sudan-Sahelian climates). In the southern part of the domain, differences between the model and the observations are the largest, prior to any assimilation. These differences are linked to the model failing to represent the behavior of some specific vegetation species, which are known to put on leaves before the first rains of the season. The LDAS-Monde analysis is very efficient at compensating for this model weakness. Evapotranspiration estimates from the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) project as well as upscaled carbon uptake from the FLUXCOM project are used in the evaluation process, again demonstrating improvements in the representation of evapotranspiration and gross primary production after assimilation.

Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) can provide a great environment for using machine learning algorithm for spatial data such as satellite images. Integrating this functionality with artificial intelligence algorithms for analyzing spatial data enables us to predict challenging disasters such as deforestation. Deforestation as an environmental problems has been recorded the most serious threat to environmental diversity and one of the main components of land-use change. In this paper, we investigate spatial distribution of deforestation using artificial neural networks and satellite imagery. We modeled deforestation process using various factors in determining the relationship between deforestation and environmental and socioeconomic factors. Hence, for this purpose, the proximity to roads and habitats, fragmentation of the forest, height from sea level, slope, and soil type are considered in the model. In this research, we modeled land cover changes (forests) to predict deforestation using an artificial neural network due to its significant potential for the development of nonlinear complex models. The procedure involves image registration and error correction, image classification, preparing deforestation maps, determining layers, and designing a multi-layer neural network to predict deforestation. The satellite images for this study are of a region in Hong Kong which are captured from 2012 to 2016. The results of the study demonstrate that neural networks approach for predicting deforestation can be utilized and its outcomes show the areas that destroyed during the research period.

LDAS-Monde, an offline land data assimilation system with global capacity, is applied over the CONtiguous US (CONUS) domain to enhance monitoring accuracy for water and energy states and fluxes. LDAS-Monde ingests satellite-derived Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) and Leaf Area Index (LAI) estimates to constrain the Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere (ISBA) Land Surface Model (LSM) coupled with the CNRM (Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques) version of the Total Runoff Integrating Pathways (CTRIP) continental hydrological system (ISBA-CTRIP). LDAS-Monde is forced by the ERA-5 atmospheric reanalysis from the European Center For Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) from 2010 to 2016 leading to a 7-yr, quarter degree spatial resolution offline reanalysis of Land Surface Variables (LSVs) over CONUS. The impact of assimilating LAI and SSM into LDAS-Monde is assessed over North America, by comparison to satellite-driven model estimates of land evapotranspiration from the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) project, and upscaled ground-based observations of gross primary productivity from the FLUXCOM project. Also, taking advantage of the relatively dense data networks over CONUS, we also evaluate the impact of the assimilation against in-situ measurements of soil moisture from the USCRN network (US Climate Reference Network) are used in the evaluation, together with river discharges from the United States Geophysical Survey (USGS) and the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC). Those data sets highlight the added value of assimilating satellite derived observations compared to an open-loop simulation (i.e. no assimilation). It is shown that LDAS-Monde has the ability not only to monitor land surface variables but also to forecast them, by providing improved initial conditions which impacts persist through time. LDAS-Monde reanalysis has a potential to be used to monitor extreme events like agricultural drought, also. Finally, limitations related to LDAS-Monde and current satellite-derived observations are exposed as well as several insights on how to use alternative datasets to analyze soil moisture and vegetation state.

This paper aims to build up a preference function to evaluate the public benefits of the type of agricultural farming, biodiversity, water provisions, land use type, ecotourism modes, and a monetary attribute (environmental trust fund and willingness to contribute) associated with an ecosystem service and land use program in a forest park. This study used the choice experiments to build a random utility model, analyze the average preference for the above land use attributes based on the conditional logit and used a latent class model to test the resident’s heterogeneous preferences for land use planning in the forest park. We also estimated the welfare derived from various land use programs. The empirical result had shown that: (1) increasing organic farming area, maintaining the status quo of species biodiversity, increasing the surface water provision, increasing the area of custom flora, increasing the wetland area, and setting up an integrated framework for ecotourism increase the public’s preference for the land use program; (2) we found that farmer and non-farmer haven’t the same land use preferences; (3) the ecotourism development program incorporating biodiversity, organic farming, ethnobotany, and wetland area with integrated ecotourism are more preferred than other land use program scenarios.

Wildfires have always been a part of the history of Mediterranean forests. However, forest regeneration after a wildfire is not certain. It depends on many factors, some of which may be influenced by land management activities. Failure of regeneration will cause a regime shift in the ecosystem, reducing the provision of ecosystem services and ultimately leading to desertification. How can we increase Mediterranean forests’ resilience to fire? To answer this question, we did a literature review, investigating chains of processes that allow forests to regenerate (which we label “regeneration mechanisms”), and assessed the impact of selected management practices documented in the WOCAT database on the regeneration mechanisms. We identified three distinct regeneration mechanisms that enable Mediterranean forests to recover, as well as the time frame before and after a fire in which they are at work, and factors that can hinder or support resilience. The three regeneration mechanisms enabling a forest to regenerate after a fire consist of regeneration (1) from a seed bank; (2) from resprouting individuals; and (3) from unburned plants that escaped the fire. Management practices were grouped into four categories: (1) fuel breaks, (2) fuel management, (3) afforestation, and (4) mulching. We assessed how and under what conditions land management modifies the ecosystem’s resilience. The results show that land management influences resilience by interacting with resilience mechanisms before and after the fire, and not just by modifying the fire regime. Our analysis demonstrates a need for adaptive – i.e. context- and time-specific – management strategies.

Nanling Mountain region is a typical southern hilly region, which plays an important ecological and environmental protection role in China's overall land protection pattern. Based on the remote sensing image data of Longnan City in Nanling Mountain in 2013, 2018 and 2023, this paper interpreted the land use type and analyzed the land use transfer situation by using Land use transfer flow, and Land use transfer matrix. At the same time, based on the remote sensing Ecological index (RSEI) model, the ecological environment quality of Longnan City from 2013 to 2023 was retrieved. The temporal and spatial response model of ecological environment quality to land use transfer in Longnan City from 2013 to 2023 was discussed based on Spatial autocorrelation and Geographic detector. The results show that from 2013 to 2023, the decrease of forest land (16.23km²) and the increase of construction land (13.25km²) were the main land use transfer in Longnan City. The ecological environment index of Longnan City in 2013, 2018 and 2023 was 0.789, 0.917 and 0.872, respectively, showing a trend of "first rising and then decreasing". The ecological environment quality in the north of Longnan City was significantly lower than that in the south, and the poor ecological quality area appeared in and around the northern main urban area, showing a trend of "inward contraction". Forest land, garden land, grassland, cultivated land and water area have a positive impact on ecological environment quality, while traffic land, construction land and other land have a negative impact on ecological environment quality. The response of ecological environment quality to different land use transfer modes is related to the change of the overall ecological environment quality. The interaction between LUCC and other factors had a great impact on the evolution of ecological environment quality in Longnan City.

Agricultural activities are the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon emissions from agricultural land use (CEALU) have become a hot issue across the world. However, few scholars explored the impact of agricultural land policies on carbon emissions, such as the High-standard farmland construction(HSFC) in China.Thus，by relying on provincial panel data for China for the period 2005-2017, the effect of the high-standard basic farmland construction policy on carbon emissions from agricultural land use per unit area and its regional differences were quantitatively analyzed using the difference-in-difference (DID) model. The results showed that: 1) China's CEALU per unit area presented a fluctuating upward trend during the period 2005-2017, from 392.58 kg/ha to 457.72 kg/ha, with an average annual growth rate of 1.31%. 2) The high-standard farmland construction(HSFC) policy produced a significant carbon emission reduction effect in agricultural land use, and reduced the CEALU per unit area by 10.80% on average. With the promotion of this policy, its carbon emission reduction effect in agricultural land use presented an overall increasing trend. 3) The carbon emission reduction effect of the high-standard farmland construction policy in agricultural land use was significant in central China, but non-significant in eastern China and western China.

Abstract: A two-year study of pearl millet-groundnut cropping systems across two fertilizer levels was conducted at the INRAN/TARNA research station in Maradi, Niger in the Sahelian zone of West Africa. The objective of this study was to identify the best cropping system with and without fertilizer application to optimize pearl millet and groundnut yields, land use efficiency, and economics as measured by value-to-cost ratio. The experiment was conducted with three replications, and ten treatments combination of five pearl millet and groundnut cropping systems (pearl millet and groundnut sole crops, and three pearl millet – groundnut intercrops), and two fertilizer levels. Sole cropping produced the highest pearl millet grain by over 300 kg ha-1 and groundnut pod yields by over 500 kg ha-1, but all the intercropping systems had a LER above 1.0 with land use efficiency increased by 19 to 41%, also intercropping increased diversity, and reduced risk. Fertilizer application increased yields in all cropping systems by 200 to 600 kg ha-1. Government subsidy increased the value-to-cost ratio by 0.5 to 2, 5 units, and was required for economic response for pearl millet sole and intercrops in 2022. The groundnut sole cropping system had the greatest economic response to fertilizer application. Based on the risky environment and multiple end uses needed by producers, the intercrop system M-G: 1:3:1 with fertilizer application is usually the best option to optimize pearl millet and groundnut production.

One of the most problematic forms of nature protection in Poland relates to landscape parks. On the one hand, they include the most valuable landscapes; on the other hand, the areas within the landscape park still have economic uses. Therefore, the monitoring of landscape changes within landscape parks is necessary in order to properly manage these forms of protection. The main objective of the study was to monitor the scale and nature of landscape transformations within the boundaries of landscape parks in Poland during the period 2000–2018 and to assess the possibility of using the landscape change index (LCI) to monitor the intensity of landscape transformations within this type of protected area. Filling a gap in the research on landscape changes, I developed and verified the possibility of using LCI for monitoring the intensity of landscape changes using the example of 12 landscape parks in the Lower Silesia region. Preliminary analyses of the transformations within all landscape parks in Poland showed an upward trend, both in terms of the number of types of identified landscape changes as well as their area. In spite of the large diversity and degree of transformation in landscape parks, several dominant processes can be observed. The largest number and area of changes during each of the analyzed periods were found in transformations within forest landscapes (temporary and permanent deforestation and forest maturation), which constitute the dominant type of land cover within most of the landscape parks. In open landscapes, changes mainly relate to afforestation and natural succession in meadows, pastures and arable land, as well as the transformation of arable land into mining areas. Twelve case studies, covering all landscape parks of the Lower Silesia, have shown that the LCI is an excellent tool for monitoring the intensity of landscape changes, but it is dependent on the accuracy of the source data. The analyses confirmed that, during the study periods, the changes in all 12 Lower Silesian landscape parks were at a low level, but their particular intensification took place in the years 2012–2018. The highest LCI was found in the area where a natural disaster had occurred (air tornado), which destroyed huge areas of forest in landscape parks. After changes in the forest landscape, the most frequently identified type of change in 2006–2012 is the transformation of non-forest landscapes into forest landscapes. The main reason for such changes was the expansion of forest into abandoned arable land, meadows and pastures. The use of the Corine Land Cover database to calculate LCI and monitor the intensity of landscape change revealed a low usability of the database for the year 2000 and a high usability for data from 2006–2018.

Ambitious biodiversity goals to protect 30% or more of the Earth’s surface by 2030 (30x30) require strategic near-term targets. To define areas that must be protected to prevent the most likely and imminent extinctions, we propose Conservation Imperatives—16,825 unprotected sites harboring rare and threatened species and spanning ~164 Mha of the terrestrial realm. We estimate that protecting the Conservation Imperatives would cost approximately US$169 billion [90% probability: $146 — $228 billion]. Globally, 38% of the 16,825 sites are either adjacent to or within 2.5 km of an existing protected area, potentially reducing land acquisition and management costs. These sites should be prioritized for conservation action over the next five years as part of a broader strategy to expand the global protected area network. The expansion of global protected areas between 2018–2023 incorporated only 7% of sites harboring range-limited and threatened species, highlighting a renewed urgency to conserve these habitats. Permanently protecting only 0.74% of land found in the tropics, where Conservation Imperatives are concentrated, could prevent the majority of predicted near-term extinctions once adequately resourced. We estimate this cost to be US$29 billion to US$46 billion per year over the next five years. Multiple approaches will be required to meet long-term protection goals: providing rights and title to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) conserving traditional lands, government designation of new protected areas on federal and state lands, and land purchase or long-term leasing of privately held lands.

Madagascar is home of many biodiversity and most of them are endemic to the island. Herpetofauna combining two classes of vertebrates such as amphibians and reptiles; this group with more than 350 described species for each class is considered as high diversity. Species in this group is more specialists in terms of habitat selection which they are forest dependent especially the eastern rainforest. Habitat loss by swidden agriculture practice and charcoal production is the main threat in this country. Forest regeneration is very difficult because people continue to use lands for crops until it’s becoming infertile. We conducted research impact of land use change on biodiversity considering amphibians and reptiles around CAZ. The study area is one of the biggest remaining corridors in the eastern of Madagascar. This study took account of four habitats from forest to degraded land and one additional land use which is the reforestation plot. The mains goal of this study is to compare species diversity and abundance in objectives to identify where we should focus on conservation in the future. Three standard methods for herpetofauna inventory were used for each land use. Forty four sites were visited and 152 species of amphibian and reptile were inventoried. Closed canopy forest is home of the most species that we found and the degraded land is the poorest in terms of species richness. Result of this study indicates also that habitat restoration is very important. The difference between land uses might be the result of the change on microclimate which affect species distribution.

This article seeks to provide an improved and more comprehensive understanding of the concept and theories on wasteland. It achieves this by focusing on the Indian context allowing us to unpack the importance of including multiple perspectives of wasteland narratives; this means including more positive narratives of the potential of wasteland to inform and improve prospects for land policies in the global south. Wasteland is commonly recognized as an underutilized category of land that may transform into a valuable resource base with proper management measures. The term waste has multiple angles that carry different notions ranging from fallow to agroforestry land in the global south and Brownfield to green space in the global north. We conduct a narra-tive review approach to qualitatively analyze the concept wastelands studied in pre-existing lit-erature from 1970 to present. The unsystematic literature review approach incorporates multiple elements of wasteland discourse, like understanding the meaning of the term on a global scale, setting out the meaning of the term waste into multiple perspectives explicitly in the Indian con-text, along with different classes and management approaches of wasteland from a national per-spective. The multiple perspectives of wasteland not only generate misconception on land resource but spawn difficulties in land use policy particularly for Indian scenario. For sustainable land use policy, reclaiming wasteland would be the best possible way for India and other countries in Global South, which requires a comprehensive methodological overview on wasteland narrative.

With the changing relationship between urban and rural areas in China, the rural areas are experiencing rapid social transformation. To ensure successful implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, land consolidation has become a major measure of rural economic reform. Existing research focuses on quantitative studies exploring the relationship between land consolidation and rural economic development, but there is a lack of studies on the relationship between land consolidation and social change. In this study, Jin’an Village is selected as the research area, using semi-structured interviews and semi-participatory observation to obtain original materials, aiming to make a detailed description of the specific practice of land consolidation, and to analyze the impact of land consolidation on the transformation of rural social consciousness. The study found that rural land consolidation involves villagers in the land consolidation process, which can effectively stimulate villagers’ participation in public affairs. Concurrently, the interaction between villagers and outside investors disrupts the conventional socialization model in rural areas and motivates villagers to act in accordance with contractual agreements. The conclusion is that land consolidation in rural areas can enhance the political democracy and legal consciousness of local villagers, which can lead to a change in local social consciousness. Our findings also emphasize the crucial necessity to grant rural villagers with improved accessibility to professional services and information, coupled with the continued promotion of land consolidation to advance modernization in these areas.

Affem Boussou community forest (AFC) abounds in important biological resources. This study, which contributes to its better management, examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of the vegetation and its ecological and structural characteristics to propose a zoning plan for the said forest. The analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamics of land use in the AFC from Google Earth images of 2015, 2018, and 2021 revealed a regressive trend of formations: crops and fallows (-33.98%), dense dry forests (-7.92%), gallery forests (-3.46%), plantations (-100%), grassy savannahs and meadows (-18.84%) except for tree/shrub savannahs (484.23%). The floristic inventory identified 163 species divided into 129 genera and 55 families. Fabaceae (14.02%), and Combretaceae (10.55%) are the most represented families. Anogeissus leiocarpa (5.19%) and Vitellaria paradoxa (4.72%) are the most frequent species. We note the dominance of individuals of small diameters. The regeneration potential of the AFC is 64 feet/ha due to 21 feet/ha of suckers, 29 feet/ha of seedlings, and 14 feet/ha of shoots. As a zoning plan, the AFC was subdivided into four series: the agroforestry zone (18.80%), the sustainable production forest zone (42.22%), the buffer zone (11%), and the biological conservation zone (28%). These results constitute a scientific basis for testing ecological indicators of sustainable management of community forests in Togo.

This study focuses on land tenure in an urban environment. Specifically, it intends to elucidate the influence of land tenure security on access to housing in urban communities. The conurbation of Grand Nokoué, which is an agglomeration of five cities in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, captures attention due to its particular features as a developing city. Based on the literature, this study outlined three major factors of insecure land tenure, namely, lack of recognition by authorities, lack of protection from eviction or expulsion, and informal community-based rights. In addition, we examined four characteristics of relevant housing issues, namely, the development of shantytowns, the multiplicity of precarious housing, the loss of housing for the development of public projects, and exposure to house demolition under judicial decision to formulate our hypotheses. The results of a field observation and semi-structured interviews supported the hypotheses and demonstrated that the legal access to land, the protection of the population from anarchic eviction and informal community-based rights may positively influence the development of sustainable urban housing.

The desert locust remains a major threat to global food security. Control operations are a crucial tool to manage crisis; this research investigated the nature of control operations conducted between 2019-2021. Historical data on desert locust and control operations were obtained from the survey reports at the FAO Locust Hub and analysed with respect to survey reports, land cover types, cropland/rangeland extent and crop productivity data. We found that 16.1% of the grid cells with locust presence and 14.9% of the grid cells with control operations had a proportion of rangeland higher than 0.75; while 13.3% of the grid cells with locust presence and 13.2% of the grid cells with control operations had a proportion of croplands higher than 0.75, highlighting that locust presence and control operations were reported in both rangeland and cropland. Control operations continue to be used both to reduce overall locust numbers and to protect crops. Furthermore, through identifying which crops were most at risk, our analyses indicate that wheat production was under the highest strain during periods of increased locust infestations.

While the scientific community has focused on documenting environmental degradation and developing scenarios that help identify the operational margins for system Earth, less attention has been given to the mental models of decision-makers that underpin environmental policies. We suggest that global efforts to stop deforestation and biodiversity loss are failing in part due to a critical blind spot in the analysis—human agency. To address this weakness, we propose to formulate mental models and translate them into strategy games. This will increase the representation of agency in scenario development and create spaces for deliberation between different worldviews. We claim that personal transformation can be achieved through transparent democratic dialogues that identify, challenge, and respond to the human and social limitations inherent to decision-making and we present empirical examples that validate that claim. Their transformation through gaming gives decision-makers access to the experience of consciousness: “what is it like being a stakeholder?”. Such experience will help to break free of established norms in science and political processes.

The post-2007 crisis-induced an agricultural expansion across Africa, but local level production and marketing experiences remain understudied. This study assesses the dynamics of agricultural expansion and small-scale farmers’ experiences in rural Zambia. Using a mixed research design, data were drawn from surveys, multi-level interviews, group discussions policy reviews and observations. Results show an agriculture expansion among small-scale farmers is underway due to favourable climatic conditions, land, and water availability, enabled by state subsidies, and an emerging market in commercial and supermarket outlets. However, farmers encounter production and marketing challenges related to poor tenure security, late delivery of inputs, and low financing. They face low and fluctuating prices, poor infrastructure, including low levels of mechanisation necessary to expand the production. Overall, despite an agricultural and land-use expansion taking shape, actual benefits for real transformation are largely missing – and currently over their heads. An argument is made that whilst policy actors continue to impress farmers to organise themselves to maximise benefits of an agricultural expansion, actual processes on how farmers can achieve this are missing in policy and practice. This necessitates a focus on multi-level processes aimed at addressing production, storage and marketing dynamics within a progressive coordination arrangement that centralizes small producers. Until that is addressed, the prospects for local development and poverty reduction for small-scale farmers under an agricultural expansion will be slender but continue to centrally reside in the state efforts to create enabling local and community environment that addresses real challenges. Overall, this study helps to extend the debate on diverse processes shaping rural transformation in Zambia and across sub-Saharan Africa, including the role and importance of agricultural expansion.

The major global pressures of rapid urbanization and urban growth are compounded by climate impacts resulting in increased vulnerability for urban dwellers, with these vulnerabilities exacerbated during COVID-19. Much of this is concentrated in urban and peri-urban areas where urban development spreads into hazard-prone areas. Often this development is dominated by poor quality homes in informal settlements or slums with poor tenure security. Lessons from a current resilience-building project shows that the fit-for-purpose (FFP) approach to land administration can provide a solution to increase the number of households with security of tenure and improve resilience outcomes as informal settlements grow. This paper discusses the influence of FFP land administration on vulnerabilities to multiple shocks related to climate change and COVID-19. This paper proposes ways the growth of human settlements can be better managed through responsible governance of land tenure rights, and effective land-use planning to improve resilience to different shocks and stresses and provide adequate access to safe land and shelter. Land administration systems can support improved resilience to the multiple stressors of climate and pandemics through improving tenure security and enhancing land use planning controls. Climate change adaptation and risk management need to be better mainstreamed into two major elements of land governance: (i) securing and safeguarding of land rights, and (ii) planning and control of land-use.

Changes in agricultural policy may have rapid impact even on landscapes which have taken millennia to form. Here we explore the potential of UK leaving the EU as a catalyst for profound changes in pastoral landscapes in Wales. Impending change of the trading regime governing agricultural produce, concurrent to public pressure to use agricultural subsidies for environmental goals, may lead to unforeseen consequences for Welsh natural environment. We employ a combination of change demand modelling and ‘story and simulation approach’ to predict the effect of five hypothetical scenarios on land use and land use change in Wales by 2030. We show that the most extreme trade scenario would result in a near-uniform distribution of broadleaf woodland across most of Wales. Abandonment of marginal and low productivity grazing would likely give way to afforestation, initiating a return to forested landscapes not seen in Wales for several thousands of years.

Leclère et al.¹ have outlined the possibility of a biodiversity transition for the 21^st century, a line of thinking equivalent to the Forest Transition theory and what it says about forest cover globally². The authors use a suite of global models to explore the impacts on global biodiversity of interventions on land-use, consumption and production patterns. They outline six strategies that have the potential to stop the downfall of global terrestrial biodiversity by 2050 and redress it to a pre-1970 level by 2100. Although robust, sophisticated and well-illustrated, the conclusions of this paper cannot alone be used to frame a post-2020 biodiversity strategy.

Impact of land use and land cover (LULC) change on soil erosion is still imperfectly understood, especially in northeastern China (NEC). Based on the Revised Universal Loss Equation (RUSLE), the variability of soil erosion at different spatial scales following land use changes in1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2017 was analyzed. The regionally spatial patterns of soil loss coincided with the topography, rainfall erosivity, soil erodibility, and use patterns, and around 45% soil loss came from arable land. Regionally, soil erosion rates increased from 1980 to 2010 and decreased from 2010 to 2017, ranging from 3.91 to 4.45 t ha-1 yr-1 with an average of 4.22 t ha-1 yr-1 in 1980-2017. The rates of soil erosion less than 1.41 t ha-1 yr-1 decreased from 1980 to 2010, and increased from 2010 to 2017, and opposite changing patterns occurred in higher erosion classes (i.e., above 5 t ha-1 yr-1). At a provincial scale, Liaoning Province experienced the highest soil erosion rate of 9.43 t ha-1 yr-1, followed by Jilin Province, the east Inner Mongolia, and Heilongjing Province. Arable land continuously increased at the expense of forest in the high-elevation and steep-slope areas from 1980 to 2010, and decreased from 2010 to 2017, resulting in increased areas with erosion rates higher than 7.05 t ha-1 yr-1. At a county scale, around 75% of the countries had soil erosion rate higher than its tolerance level. The county numbers with higher erosion rate increased in 1980-2010 and decreased in 2010- 2017, resulting from the sprawl and withdrawal of arable land. The results indicate that appropriate policies can control soil loss through limiting arable land sprawl in areas of unfavorable regions in the NEC.

Numerous cities in our modern world are unfortunately encountering the negative effects of urban sprawl: this includes unrestricted settlement, degradation in the quality of their environment, traffic congestion, sub-standard buildings, and air pollution as well as flooding, swampy areas, landslides, and settlement zones with dilapidated utilities and infrastructures that are not safe for living. The Ulaanbaatar City land management master plan defined the settlement zone area suitable for living as 33,698 hectares. However, due to unrestricted urban sprawl caused by exponential growth of the city’s population, the settlement zone area reached 39,235 hectares, which exceeds the limit by 5,537 hectares. In order to tackle this issue, several urban planning concepts were developed to be implemented within the Ulaanbaatar City urban planning framework. It is, in any case, problematic to choose a single planning concept due to the fact that neither measurements nor analyses are being made of the respective spatial quantitative indicators in urban planning assumptions that are taking the current situation into consideration. One of the prerequisites for identifying an optimal concept in urban planning is an assessment of the current situation, and measuring the impacts against its quantitative data. In the current research, when defining Ulaanbaatar city sprawl, the base year was selected as 1990, the time when the city started to sprawl. Research analyses were made using geographic information systems based on the satellite data 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 Landsat ТМ-5, 2010 Quickbird, 2015 World View and 2020 Sentinel2, respectively. Based on the results of determining the city sprawl using spatial indicators, the urban planning concepts applied thus far have been analyzed in relation to land use efficiency and land use structural changes. This research paper addresses the issue of reducing unrestricted urban sprawl by increasing the internal density of the city. The research results show that, by applying the concept of a compact city in urban redevelopment planning for 4,604 hectares, and by allocating the settlements in 12,479 hectares, it is possible to reduce the urban expansion threefold and increase land use efficiency accordingly.

The aim of this paper is to study changes in land use and the evolution of vegetation in Cacheu River Mangroves Natural Park in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. To do this, we will study variations in the NDVI, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. In order to perform the calculations and subsequent analysis, images from three years— 2010, and 2017—were used, all corresponding to the same time of year so that the phenological stage is the same. To perform a more reliable analysis, the park was divided into five classes based on the main use of the land: mangals, palm forest, paddy fields, savannahs and others. Using a statistical sample, same areas were selected for each class and the corresponding NDVIs were calculated for the years in which ASTER images were available. The study made it possible to conclude that at present, management of the park is not the most suitable, given that the changes in land use observed represent a decrease in mangrove swamps, despite the fact that these forests constitute the most important ecological area of all those that make up the park. Mangals are being replaced by other land uses.

The coordination planning between land use and transportation system is an important premise of solving urban transportation problems and realizing land use integration. This study investigates the interactive and feedback relationship between land use and transportation system from the perspective of access management. By integrating the land use and traffic data from Las Vegas Metropolitan area with the system dynamics model, the causal relationship and causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are introduced to analyze the cause-and-effect relationship and quantitative relationship between the factors of the combined system of land use and transportation, and then sub-models partition and system simulation are performed. The systems dynamics model is established by analyzing the relationship between a series of access management techniques, traffic characteristics, and land use features. The results show that system dynamics model can be used as an effective alternative to model the symbiosis relationship of land use and transportation system for urban planning and construction.

Pekalongan is one of several cities that lies in the northern coast of Java island which is often flooded due to sea level rise. This condition impacted its urban development characteristic and increase in the future. In this research both Geographical Information System based and Spatial Metric approach are used. The spatial pattern is analyzed by using spatial metric based on the exploration of land use change that occurred. In this research, the spatial pattern is focused on aggregation pattern and diversity in coastal area. The result shows that the land use of coastal area are dominated with swamp, then followed by settlement and fishpond. It is also shown that the greatest land use change occurred on paddy field and swamp areas. Based on the spatial metric calculation, the aggregation level of land use decrease periodically and has a small growth level. It is indicated from its metric value aggregation and diversity from two periods: 2003-2009 and 2009-2016. Overall the land use of Pekalongan experienced large dynamics, especially in its coastal area. The spatial pattern trend in those area tend to be more sprawl as defined by the decrease of aggregation pattern and low level of land use growth pattern.

Pekalongan is one of several cities that lies in the northern coast of Java island which is often flooded due to sea level rise. This condition impacted its urban development characteristic and increase in the future. In this research both Geographical Information System based and Spatial Metric approach are used. The spatial pattern is analyzed by using spatial metric based on the exploration of land use change that occurred. In this research, the spatial pattern is focused on aggregation pattern and diversity in coastal area. The result shows that the land use of coastal area are dominated with swamp, then followed by settlement and fishpond. It is also shown that the greatest land use change occurred on paddy field and swamp areas. Based on the spatial metric calculation, the aggregation level of land use decrease periodically and has a small growth level. It is indicated from its metric value aggregation and diversity from two periods: 2003-2009 and 2009-2016. Overall the land use of Pekalongan experienced large dynamics, especially in its coastal area. The spatial pattern trend in those area tend to be more sprawl as defined by the decrease of aggregation pattern and low level of land use growth pattern.

Our study reviews the significance of archaeological parks in the tourism sector, with a specific focus on how digital presence and visitor feedback impact their cultural and touristic appeal. Utilizing statistical analyses such as regression and cluster analysis on data sourced from both Hungarian and Western European parks, the research scrutinizes TripAdvisor and Google ratings, alongside the volume of photographs and reviews. The findings highlight a modest correlation between digital visibility and overall visitor ratings, underscoring the complex relationship between online engagement and the quality of visitor experience. Notably, the cluster analysis identified two distinct groups, signifying diverse levels of visitor engagement and digital visibility across the parks. The conclusions drawn advocate for a comprehensive strategy to enhance visitor experiences, emphasizing the integration of digital engagement with the promotion of the parks cultural and historical values. By exploring the influence of digital presence on the appeal of archaeological parks, our study sheds light on the evolving interface between urban studies and digital heritage, highlighting how digital tools and online platforms are becoming increasingly integral in shaping the perceptions and experiences of urban cultural sites.

Wang et al. (Nature 623, 340—350; 2023)¹ used satellite observations and phenological signatures to estimate the extent of planted rubber (Hevea brasiliensis Müll.Arg.) and associated deforestation for eight Southeast Asian countries. Their map implies that planted rubber has caused more than 4 Mha of deforestation since 1993 — a value greater than previously assumed. Unfortunately, their approach was flawed. Our assessment indicates that the actual extent of planted rubber is approximately half that reported by Wang et al., while the extent of associated deforestation is approximately one quarter.

Population is the main driver of land systems and environmental change. However, the population is usually treated as a variable that only considers the population number, and the multidimensional population structure is largely ignored. There has been a systematic transition of population structure in the past several decades, such as the changing household structure, the increasing aging population and divorce rate, and human migration. All these have direct or indirect impacts on land use and environmental issues. Here, we will take China as an example to examine the relationship between household dynamics and land use change in China by exam-ining changes in household structure and land use change in China between 1980 and 2020. The results show:1) the number of households increased by 130.95% from 1980 to 2020, while the population only increased by 42.83%. The size of households decreased from 4.41 to 2.92 in China from 1982 to 2020. The household dynamics vary from province to province, which is affected by urbanization rate and economic development. 2) Birth rates, divorce rates, population aging, and migration all affect household structure, which directly or indirectly affects changes in land use systems. 3) The changes in China's land use are interlinked and interact with changes in household structure, evident in the increase in residential land use and the abandonment of arable land. The rising household number increased the area of urban and rural settlement, leading to the fragmentation of cultivated land and the reduction of ecological land. To regulate land use change for sustainable development, future land use planning should take into effect of household dynamics, and reduce the negative effects of household dynamics on land systems and environmental change.

Wetland ecosystems provide valuable services to human beings, but they are also among the most threatened ecosystems in the world (1). Sixteen ecosystem services are identified through the South African Water Research Commission's Wet-Health Tool (2). This study sought to establish which of these ecosystem services are highly ranked/rated by the community members living in the Soutpansberg area in South Africa. This area is a strategic water source/watershed. The area is rich in biodiversity and is also experiencing competing administrative jurisdictions: the local traditional leadership and the municipal council. This study also sought to determine the influence of age, education status, employment status, and family income, among other demographic factors, on how people view the importance of services derived from wetlands. It also sought to establish whether people in urban settings view the ecosys-tem services obtained from wetlands similarly to people in rural settings. A literature review was conducted to understand the wetland ecosystem services and how communities benefit from these services. A close-ended questionnaire was used to collect data for the current study, which was circulated among the villagers around the wetlands, particularly those living close to the wetlands. One hundred and sixteen responses from the study were recorded. Food for livestock was ranked the greatest benefit or service derived from the wetlands rated by 82% of the participants, followed by the provision of cultivated foods at 60%, provision of water for human use at 58%, provision of harvestable resources at 42% and erosion control at 38% completes the top 5 ranked ecosystem services in the area. The study concluded that the participants living in rural areas had greater awareness of wetlands' ecosystem services than their urban counterparts.

Flood disasters have become an annual occurrence along the East Coast of North Sumatra (ECNS) and Medan City. Numerous studies have examined the causal factors flood disasters in this area, such as changes in land use, drainage issues, and population growth, but the intensity of flood disasters continues to rise. In this research, we focused on evaluating the unexplored factors of land subsidence and rising sea levels in this region. Our investigation uses multi-sensor satellite data and field surveys to conduct an assessment of the rate of land subsidence and sea level rise and assess their implications on flood disasters. This study highlights the potential of multi-sensor satellite data as a primary resource for assessing flood disasters in coastal areas and densely populated large cities. Furthermore, we propose a solution to reduce the negative impact of flood disasters by by engaging local communities and environmental enthusiasts in mangrove reforestation along the coastline.

In Ethiopia, land degradation in the form of gully development and soil nutrient depletion is a very serious issue. The goal of this study is to determine how different types of land management practices and slope positions affect particular soil physico-chemical characteristics in the Agamssa watershed. Using systematic sampling techniques, soil samples were taken using a sampling quadrat (15 * 15 m) that was placed 50 m apart from one another. A total of 54 quadrats were planted at three slope positions: upper (>15%), middle (10–15%), and foot (3–10%) slope respectively. 18 composite soil samples were then. A two-way ANOVA was used to analyze the data, and the Least Significant Difference (LSD) test was used to separate the means at p ≤ 0.05. According to the study's findings, the value of most soil physical and chemical characteristics was higher in closed area than on open grazing land, as well as at foot slope position compared to middle and upper slope positions. The higher mean value (7.3 ppm) was recorded at the foot slope, while the lower mean value (4.9 ppm) was found at the upper slope position. The exchangeable cations such as Mg+2, K+, and Na+ were significantly (p≤ 0.01) affected by the main effect of land-use types. The higher mean values of Mg+2 (9.70 mq/100g), K+ (0.38 mq/100 g), and Na+ (0.035 mq/100 g) were found at area closure, whereas the lower mean values of Mg+2 (7.33 mq/100g), K+ (0.30 mq/100 g), and Na+ (0.027 mq/100g) were recorded at open grazing land. It was able to conclude this study that area closure enhances the physical and chemical qualities of soil and recovers woody plant species. Therefore, converting open grazing land into a closure area is advised.

In response to the problem of increasing climate change and energy security, investment in renewable energy sources has increased significantly both in Europe and globally. Wind and solar power plants are expected to be the largest contributors to global decarbonization, ranking first and second in projected capacity by 2050. Since all power plants have some impact on the environment, this also applies to photovoltaic power plants. Because of the large capacities projected for PV installed capacity, their environmental impacts should be evaluated. The environmental impacts of PV power plants change over time. Improving the manufacturing technology of PV system components, increasing the efficiency of solar cells, and using materials that are less harmful to the environment will reduce these impacts. Manufacturing PV system components is a highly energy-intensive process that involves greenhouse gas emissions. As new renewable energy capacity is built, the amount of "green" electricity on the grid increases, reducing CO2 emissions per kWh consumed. The objective of this paper is to analyze the current status of the environmental impact of PV power plants under these changing conditions in terms of CO2 emissions, land use, pollutant and noise emissions, and water consumption. The capacity installed to date will reach the end of its lifetime by 2050, which means that the amount of waste associated with it will increase over time. This can have a significant impact on the environment, which is why part of the work is dedicated to this problem. In addition to the available information from the literature, in the part related to land use, the authors also made their own estimates based on data on newly installed PV power plants and PV modules available on the market. The results of the analysis show that there is enough land both in Europe and worldwide to install the planned capacities of rooftop and ground-mounted PV power plants. CO2 emissions are at the same level as for concentrated solar power, with a decreasing trend. Pollutant emissions, noise and water consumption are not a major problem compared to other types of power plants. Overall, it can be concluded that the expansion of PV capacity has a very positive impact on the environment.

Substantial reductions of the human and economic activities like road traffic for several months in 2020 were one of the consequences of the Coronavirus disease. This unprecedented change in urban metabolism also affected temperature and air pollutants. This study investigates the effects of the first COVID-19 lockdown over 43 cities in Europe. It determines the influence of anthropogenic activities on nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), and particulate matter (PM2.5) as well as on land surface temperature (LST), and the surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII), using satellite, modelled, and mobility data. Our findings show that there are great temporal and spatial differences and distinct patterns between the cities regarding the magnitude of change of the variables under study. In general, the results indicate a significant decrease in NO2 concentrations in most of the studied cities compared to the reference period 2015-2019. However, reductions could not be attributed to mobility changes like less traffic at transit stations, contrary to the results of previous studies. O3 levels increased during the first lockdown mainly influenced by the decreasing NO2 concentrations. The PM pattern was inconsistent over time and space. Similar as the NO2 results, no relation to the altered mobility behavior was found. No clear signal could be detected for LST and the SUHII, likely due to dominating meteorological influences. Therefore, single city case studies may be misleading.

The major industrial cities of Bangladesh are heavily experiencing air pollution-related problems due to the increased trend of Particulate Matter (PM2.5) and other pollutants. This paper aimed to investigate and understand the relationship between PM2.5 and land use and climatic variables and to identify the riskiest area and population groups using a Geographic information system and regression analysis. The results show that about 41% of PM2.5 concentration increased within 19 years (2002-2021) in the study area, while the highest concentration of PM2.5 was found from 2012 to 2021. The concentrations of PM2.5 were higher over barren lands, forests, croplands, and urban areas. About 64%, 62.7%, 57%, and 55% concentrations were increased annually over barren lands, forests, cropland, and urban regions, respectively, from 2002-2021. The highest concentration level of PM2.5 (84 mg m-3) among other land use classes was found in urban areas in 2021. The regression analysis shows that air pressure (r2= - 0.26), evaporation (r2= - 0.01), humidity (r2= - 0.22), rainfall (r2= - 0.20), and water vapor (r2= - 0.03) were negatively correlated with PM2.5. On the other hand, air temperature (r2= 0.24), ground heat (r2= 0.60), and wind speed (r2= 0.34) were positively correlated with PM2.5. More than 60 Upazilas were the most polluted areas, with 1,948,029 populations (ages 0-5), 485,407 (ages 50-69), and a total population of 11,260,162 were in the high-risk/hotspot zone. The government line department may use the main results paper's key results, policymakers, stainable development practitioners, academicians, and others for integrated air pollution mitigation and management in Bangladesh and other geographical settings worldwide.

Abstract: In the last five years, the urban development of Limassol City has rapidly increased in the sectors of industry, trade, real estate, and many others. This exponentially increased urban development introduces several concerns about the aggravation of the land subsidence in the Limassol coastal front. Fifty Copernicus Sentinel-1 data from 2017-2021 have been processed and analyzed using the Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP) and the Stanford Method for Persistent Scatters (StaMPS). A case study for the identification and analysis of the elements (PS) in pixels in a series of interferograms, and then, the quantity of the land displacements in the Line of Sight, in the Limassol coastal front, is presented in this research, with the subsidence rates up to about (-5 to 4 mm / year). For the validation of the detected deformation, accurate ground-based geodetic measurements along the coastal area were used. Concordantly, taking into account that there are a significant number of skyscrapers planned to be built, this study attempts a preliminary assessment of the impact these structures will pose on the coastal front of the area of Limassol.

According to this study, approximately half of Africa's forests are utilized primarily or partially for the production of wood and non-wood commodities. Aims to evaluate Africa's forestry and forest products, namely Wood Forest Products (WFPs) and Non-wood Forest Products (NWFPs) in the sixteen (16) West African countries. While adhering to the following guidelines: wood extraction and preparation, analyzing wood primarily used as an energy source in Africa, identifying non-wood forest products in Africa, the state of export, trade, and customs procedures in West Africa, and examining the role of forests and forest stakeholders in Africa's low-carbon economy transition. An exploratory literature review of selected wood forest products and non-wood forest products (plants and animals) in West Africa identifying the country, the natural land area with the natural habitat issues of the forest, the species most harvested and traded in the West African sub-region. The study reemphasized some government legislation, policies, and market trade failures and limitations while also stating that trees may help in the low-carbon revolution through interventions aimed at maintaining, improving, and restoring natural capital have demonstrated that high environmental requirements of sustainable forest management (SFM) may be met in both natural and planted forests. The study identified a systematic assessment of the most common forest products (wood and non-wood forest products) considering the available data on the national forest reserves of the selected countries in West Africa. The study also revealed the need for biodiversity conservation of the available forest reserves to help mitigate the impact of global warming targeting the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 13- Climate Action. Which is focused on integrating climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning signs into the national policies, improving forest planning and management education, awareness-raising, and institutional capacity within the sub-region.

The 2018 summer drought in Europe was particularly extreme in terms of intensity and impact due to the combination of low rainfall and high temperatures. However, it remains unclear how this drought developed in time and space in such an extreme way. In this study we aimed to get a better understanding of the role of land-atmosphere interactions. More specifically, we investigated whether there was a change in water vapor originating from land, if that caused a reduction in rainfall, and by this mechanism possibly the propagation and intensification of the drought in Europe. Our first step was to use remote sensing products for soil moisture content (SMC) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to see where the 2018 drought started and how it developed in time and space. Our SMC and NDVI analysis showed that the 2018 drought started to impact the soil and vegetation state in June in Scandinavia and the British Isles. After that it moved towards the West of Europe where it intensified in July and August. In September, it started to decay. In October, drought was observed in southeast Europe as well. Based on the observed patterns we divided Europe into six regions of similar spatiotemporal characteristics of SMC and NDVI. Then, we used a global gridded dataset of the fate of land evaporation (i.e., where it ends up as precipitation) to investigate whether the drought intensification and propagation was impacted by the reduction in water vapor transported from the regions that first experienced the drought. This impact was investigated by identifying the anomalies in the water vapor originating from land recycling, imports and exports within Europe during the spring, summer, and autumn seasons. From these regions we identified four drought regions and investigated the changes in water vapor originating from source regions on the development of drought in those regions. It was found that during the onset phase of the 2018 drought in Europe that the water vapor originating from land played an important role in mitigating the precipitation anomalies as, for example, the share of land evaporation contributing to precipitation increased from 27% (normal years) to 38% (2018) during July in West of Europe. Land evaporation played a minor role in amplifying it during the intensification phase of the drought as the share of land evaporation contribution to precipitation decreased from 23% (normal years) to 21% (2018) during August in West of Europe. These findings are somewhat in contrast to similar studies in other continents that found the land surface to play a strong amplifying role for drought development. Subsequently, we found that the relative increase in the amount of land water vapor originating from eastern half of Europe played a role in delaying the onset and accelerating the decay of the 2018 drought in West of Europe.

Abstract: Green walls and green dams are increasingly being considered as part of many nation-al and international desertification initiatives. This paper studies the spatiotemporal evolution of the green dam in the Moudjbara region (Djelfa Province, Algeria) from 1972 to 2019 by using Landsat imagery, Land Change Modeler and Open Land package. The future evolution of pine plantations for the year 2029 was also forecasted, based on an anthropogenic scenario (i.e., an-thropogenic pressure is the main driver of the green dam destruction). Our findings revealed that the green dam project was successful for a few years, but after that, pine plantations deteri-orated significantly due to forest harvesting, livestock overgrazing, and the proliferation of the pine caterpillar processionary, which destroyed most of the reforestation. Land Change Modeler predicted a huge degradation of pine plantations for the year 2029, and if the deforestation con-tinues at the same rate, the green dam will disappear in the Moudjbara region during the next few decades. Aware of this threat, the Algerian authorities are now planning to reforest more than 1.2 million ha under the latest rural renewal policy by introducing new principles related to sustainable development, fighting desertification, and climate change adaptation

In response to the complex social, environmental and economic situation caused by the "Terra dei Fuochi" phenomenon, the IZSM collaborated closely with the Terra dei Fuochi working group, carrying out additional monitoring surveys both on food (QR Code Campania project[30]), and on the environment (Campania Trasparente project[31]). This model was developed in the context of the experience accumulated in the field of environmental and food monitoring, and represents an innovative tool aimed at increasing knowledge of the environmental context of the Campania Region through an objective, integrated and organic synthesis of complex environmental phe-nomena and territorial dynamics. The model proposed here is useful for the global and synthetic assessment of environmental pressure on a municipal basis. As shown, it can also be applied to aggregations of municipalities. Furthermore, it can be used in the context of institutional actions for the planning and monitoring of improvements on a local or regional scale. Finally, the pro-posed municipality-based environmental pressure index represents the basis for geo-stratification of the sample in the context of population biomonitoring studies on a regional scale, as in the described biomonitoring study design applicable to the Campania Region.

Based on the recorded watershed characteristics, the future conditions on the basin system can be predicted using a different method. In this study, dynamic land-use change and its impacts on the streamflow for the Dabus watershed were predicted using ANN-CA based method. The model performance for accurate prediction of the future land-use change on the Dabus River watershed has been checked by validation of the simulated value with the actual value, hence the overall kappa value (k) = 0.83 for the simulated 2016-LULC validated with actual 2016-LULC. Then, 2026-LULC was predicted based on the 2004 and 2009-LULC. The streamflow for the case of 2004 and 2009-LULC has been simulated using the SWAT model. The value of NSE = 0.87 and 0.90 was attained during validation of simulated streamflow for 2004 and 2009-LULC data cases, respectively. The agreement of simulated value of streamflow with the observed data is indicated as R2 = 0.91 and 0.96 for 2004-LULC and 2009-LULC. The effects of the dynamic land-use change on streamflow for the predicted land use(2026-LULC) catchment were evaluated by T-test analysis. Hence, T-stat =0.04 and -0.002 in the case of simulated streamflow used 2004-LULC and 2009-LULC, respectively compared with simulated value using 2026-LULC.

Analysis of the correlation between indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Barren Index and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index) and land surface temperature is used to natural resources and environmental studies. This research aimed to analysis of Land Surface Temperature due to dynamics of Different Indices (NDVI, NDBaI and MNDWI) Using Remote Sensing Data in three selected districts (Gida Kiremu, Limu and Amuru), western Ethiopia. From thermal and multispectral bands of landsat imageries (Landsat TM of 1990, landsat ETM+ of 2003 and landsat OLI/TIRS of 2020) Land surface temperature and NDVI, NDBaI and MNDWI were calculated. Correlation analysis was used to indicate relationships between LST with NDVI, NDBaI and MNDWI. The study found that Land Surface Temperature was increased by 5⁰C from 1990 to 2020. Vegetation areas (NDVI) and Water bodies (MNDWI) have strong negative relationship with Land Surface Temperature (R²= 0.99, 0.95) whereas Barren land (NDBaI) has positive relationship with Land Surface Temperature (R²= 0.96). Finally, we recommend the decision makers and environmental analyst to emphasis the importance of vegetation cover and water body to minimize the potential impacts of land surface temperature.

Taking a typical forest underlying surface as the research area, this study employed the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry to explore more accurate canopy parameters including tree height and canopy radius, which were used to improve the Noah-MP land surface model conducted in Dinghushan Forest Ecosystem Research Station (CN-Din). While the canopy radius was fitted as a Burr distribution, the canopy height of CN-Din forest followed a Weibull distribution. The replacement of the parameters by these observed UAV would result in the Noah-MP model. It was found that the influence on the simulation of the energy fluxes could not be negligible, and the main influence of these canopy parameters was on the latent heat flux which could decrease up to -11% in the midday while increase up to 15% in the nighttime. Additionally, this work indicated that the description of the canopy characteristics for the land surface model should be improved to accurately deliver the heterogeneity for the underlying surface.

The stormwater drainage problem is one of the major challenges facing in Shire Endaslasse town, Ethiopia. In a town, Street flooding and overtopping drainage system problems are occurring during the rainy season. This causes ponding which poses difficulties in ease of transportation and it hinders the day-to-day activity of the people. So, the study focuses on the performance of the stormwater drainage system in Shire Endaslasse town using Arc GIS and SWMM5.1. For this study, the primary data were collected by field surveys and interviews with the council body. Simulation results for storm events show that in some of the drainage systems in different regions of Shire Endaslasse town have flooded. During the field observation, the drainage structures are filled with solid wastes, inadequate inlet and outlet structures and some of the top element of the manhole have been broken this may cause a problem of aesthetic and healthy at large it may increase flood risk. The flooding risk in the drainage systems is very high due to the drainage system is undersized to cope with the current rainfall rates, but also is very limited to face the upcoming predicted rainfall.

Agricultural land fires have been linked to various and adverse impacts on ecosystems, food security and the agriculture sector. Understanding the patterns and drivers of agricultural land fires is essential for effective agricultural land fire management. The key objectives of this study were to (1) analyze the temporal and spatial patterns of agricultural land fires using satellite remote sensed data, (2) assess a range of environmental conditions that could drive the occurrence of agricultural land fires, (3) determine the best model for predicting agricultural land fires and (4) determine the relative contribution of each environmental condition variable on the best predictive model. We used both univariate and multivariate regressions for the fire prediction capability of four independent environmental conditions (fuel, weather, topographic and anthropogenic). Analysis of historical satellite data revealed that agricultural land fires were more frequent than forested land fires. Our analyses also revealed that fuel condition was the most important variable for predicting agricultural land fires followed by weather, topographic and anthropogenic conditions. This study provides a novel multivariate model for predicting agricultural land fires that harbors the potential to improve agricultural land fire management and reduce fire risk within the agricultural sector.

Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran is the largest lake in Iran and the second largest saltwater lake in the world. The water level in Lake Urmia has decreased dramatically in recent years, due to drought, climate change, and overuse of water resources for irrigation. This shrinking of the lake may affect local climate conditions, assuming that the lake itself affects the local climate. In this study, we quantified the lake’s impact on the local climate by analyzing hourly time series of data on climate variables (temperature, vapor pressure, relative humidity, evaporation, and dewpoint temperature for all seasons, and local lake/land breezes in summer) for the period 1961-2016. For this, we compared high quality, long-term climate data obtained from Urmia and Saqez meteorological stations, located 30 km and 185 km from the lake center, respectively. We then investigated the effect of lake level decrease on the climate variables by dividing the data into 1961-1995 (normal lake level) and 1996-2016 (low lake level). The results showed that at Urmia station (close to the lake), climate parameters displayed fewer fluctuations and were evidently affected by Lake Urmia compared with those at Saqez station. The effects of the lake on the local climate increased with increasing temperature, with the most significant impact in summer and the least in winter. The results also indicated that, despite decreasing lake level, local climate conditions are still influenced by Lake Urmia, but to a lesser extent.

In-cloud ice mass accretion on wind turbines is a common challenge faced by energy companies operating in cold climates. On-shore wind farms in Scandinavia are often located in regions near patches of forest, the heterogeneity length scales of which are often less than the resolution of many numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. The representation of these forests--including the cloud water response to surface roughness and albedo effects related to them--must therefore be parameterized in NWP models used as meteorological input in ice prediction systems, resulting in an uncertainty that is poorly understood and to present date not quantified. The sensitivity of ice accretion forecasts to the subgrid representation of forests is examined in this study. A single column version of the HARMONIE-AROME 3D NWP model is used to determine the sensitivity of the forecast of ice accretion on wind turbines to the subgrid forest fraction. Single column simulations of a variety of icing cases at a location in northern Sweden were examined in order to investigate the impact of vegetation cover on ice accretion in varying levels of solar insulation and wind magnitudes. In mid-winter cases, the wind speed response to surface roughness was the primary driver of the vegetation effect on ice accretion. In early season cases, the cloud water response to surface albedo effects plays a secondary role in the impact of in-cloud ice accretion, with the wind response to surface roughness remaining the primary driver for the surface vegetation impact on icing. Two different surface boundary layer (SBL) forest canopy subgrid parameterizations were tested in this study that feature different methods for calculating near-surface profiles of wind, temperature, and moisture, with the ice mass accretion again following the wind response to surface vegetation between both of these schemes.

Demographic and socio-economic developments couple with other requirements to satisfy human needs result in rapid urban expansion sometimes with increasing rate of surface extent greater than the rate of growth of population, that result in continuous sealing of ground surface thereby affecting ecosystem services. This study applied remote sensing toward achieving the progress of SDGs and stage to determine the ratio of the rate of land consumption to the rate of population growth of Gombe metropolis. QGIS 2.18 was used for the image processing and classification analysis for the key Landsat ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper), Impervious Surface Indices and population data to inform on the urban trend and LCR/PGR for the periods 2000-2005, 2005-2010, and 2010-2015. The result appears that the LCR/PGR for the periods of study show split trends. During 2000-2005 the result shows that the study area expanded outward with LCR/PGR of 1.2. The result also indicate that during 2005-2010, the study area densified with little expansion with the LCR/PGR of 0.8. The result further reveals that during 2010-2015 the LCR/PGR reached 1.8. Pointing that the study area expanded outward with the rate of ground sealing getting high.

Abstract: Many countries around the world suffer from the lack of a sea port directly linked to the rest of the world. Such countries are called "landlocked countries". This leads to Weak competitiveness of their products in the global market, as well as to the high cost of the imports. Africa has the largest share of these countries, with 16 of the 43 landlocked countries around the world. The aim of this paper is to propose a general framework for criteria that can be used to choose between ports in transit countries that can be used for import or export. These criteria are related to the assessment of the sea ports in terms of infrastructure and tariffs. It is also related to transport infrastructure from the transit country to the landlocked country and the level of safety. The study identified nine criteria that could be used to compare between ports in transit countries. Using Full Consistency Method (FUCOM) to evaluate those criteria showed that the number of navigation lines is the most important criteria followed by the port service level.

High frequency knowledge of the spatio-temporal distribution of the Downwelling Surface Shortwave Flux (DSSF) and its diffuse fraction (fd) at the surface is nowadays essential for understanding climate processes at the surface-atmosphere interface, plant photosynthesis and carbon cycle, and for the solar energy sector. The EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility for Land Surface Analysis operationally delivers estimation of the MDSSFTD (Downwelling Surface Short-wave radiation Fluxes – Total and Diffuse fraction) product with an operational status since the year 2019. The method for the retrieval was presented in the companion paper [40]. The part 2 now focuses on the evaluation of the MDSSFTD algorithm and presents the comparison of the corresponding outputs, i.e. total DSSF and diffuse fraction (fd) components, against in-situ measurements acquired at four BSRN stations over a seven-month period. The validation is performed on an instantaneous basis. We show that the satellite estimates of DSSF and fd meet the target requirements defined by the user community for all-sky (clear and cloudy) conditions. For DSSF, the requirements are 20Wm^-2 for DSSF<200Wm^-2, and 10% for DSSF>=200Wm^-2. The MBE and rMBE compared to the ground measurements are 3.618Wm^-2 and 0.252%, respectively. For fd, the requirements are 0.1 for fd<0.5, and 20% for fd>=0.5. The MBE and rMBE compared to the ground measurements are -0.044 and -17.699%, respectively. The study also provides a separate analysis of the product performances for clear sky and cloudy sky conditions. The importance of representing the cloud-aerosol radiative coupling in the MDSSFTD method is discussed. Finally, it is concluded that the quality of the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) forecasts currently available is enough accurate to obtain reliable diffuse solar flux estimates. This quality of AOD forecasts was still a limitation a few years ago.

A number of studies have shown that assimilation of satellite derived soil moisture using the ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) can improve soil moisture estimates, particularly for the surface zone. However, the EnKF is computationally expensive since an ensemble of model integrations have to be propagated forward in time. Here, assimilating satellite soil moisture data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, we compare the EnKF with the computationally cheaper ensemble Optimal Interpolation (EnOI) method over the contiguous United States (CONUS). The background error-covariance in the EnOI is sampled in two ways: i) by using the stochastic spread from an ensemble open-loop run, and ii) sampling from the model spinup climatology. Our results indicate that the EnKF is only marginally superior to one version of the EnOI. Furthermore the assimilation of SMAP data using the EnKF and EnOI is found to improve the surface zone correlation with in-situ observations at a 95% significance level. The EnKF assimilation of SMAP data is also found to improve root-zone correlation with independent in-situ data at the same significance level; however this improvement is dependent on which in-situ network we are validating against. We evaluate how the quality of the atmospheric forcing affects the analysis results by prescribing the land surface data assimilation system with either observation corrected or model derived precipitation. Surface zone correlation skill increases for the analysis using both the corrected and model derived precipitation, but only the latter shows an improvement at the 95% significance level. The study also suggest that the EnOI can be used for bias-correction of the atmospheric fields where post-processed data are not available. Finally, we assimilate three different Level-2 satellite derived soil moisture products from ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI), SMAP and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) using the EnOI, and then compare the relative performance of the three resulting analyses against in-situ soil moisture observations. In this comparison, we find that all three analyses offer improvements over an open-loop run when comparing to in-situ observations. The assimilation of SMAP data is found to perform marginally better than the assimilation of SMOS data, while assimilation of the ESA CCI data shows the smallest improvement of the three analysis products.

Earth’s land surface area is raised from conventionally flat 15 to 64 Gha to account for hilly undulation and soil relief detail. Three main aspects are: topography, rugosity/tortuosity and micro-relief/porosity of vegetation-free ground. Recalibration is arrived at from four approaches: first, direct empirical estimates from the few compiled satellite or LiDAR data with means of +2.5–26% progressively overlain by +94% at cm² scale for soil ruggedness then +108% for mm² micro-relief; second, from digital elevation models with 1.6–2.0 times flat areas; third, by ‘reverse engineering’ global soil bulk densities and carbon reserves requiring x 2–6 land. Finally, a Fermi estimation conveniently sets the World’s new surface area – that exposed to Sun, air and rain – at 100 Gha (with 36 Gha flat ocean). Soil organic carbon (SOC) is thence raised to 8,580 Gt mainly in SOM/humus with its biotic complexity plus roots, VAM-fungi and leaf-litter, that itself = 17,800 Gt. Although four to six times IPCC’s or NASA/NOAA’s calculations of just 1,500–2,300 Gt SOC, this is likely an underestimation. Global biomass and biodiversity are at least doubled (x 2–3.5) and net primary productivity (NPP) similarly increased on land to >270 Gt C yr^-1 due to terrain.

Regional heat capacity change is calculated from the ratio between the addition or subtraction of heat (ΔQ) with the increase or decrease in temperature (ΔT) region. The purpose of this study is to calculate the regional heat capacity change due to the changes of land cover composition with forest, shrubs, oil palm plantation and bare soil using Landsat-5 TM satellite data on 1994, 2000 and 2010. Total area that used on ​​this study is 12971 ha. In 1994-2000, 4 % of forest area and 2% shrubs were increased, followed by additional of biomass forest 4.01 tons/ha and 2.83 tons/ha for shrubs. The increased of forest area and biomass (tons/ha) caused by forest and shrubs growth processing towards climax that added the canopy volume. So that, the regional heat capacity in 1994 amounted 19384 MJC^o-1 increased to 19929 MJC^o-1 in 2000. Data observation for 2000-2010 showed that forest area decreased by 66% due to forest’s clearing into oil palm plantations (47%), shrubs (8%) and bare soil (11%). But, plant’s biomass continue to increased, i.e 1.48 ton/ha for forest, 2.73 tons/ha for shrubs and 4.63 tons/ha for bare soil. Before 2000, there was no land cover by oil palm plantations, so the increasing rate from this land was the biggest than the three other lands, amounting to 122.29 tons/ha. Decreasing in the percentage of forest area does not cause a decrease in the heat capacity of the region. Intensive maintenance on oil plam plantation such as water management, fertilizer and planting space made it biomass productivity and ability to save the heat is greater than the forest. As the result, in 2010 regional heat capacity increased to 22508 MJC^o-1.

The urbanization effects on land surface phenology (LSP) have been investigated by many studies, but few studies focused on the temporal variations of urbanization effects on LSP. In this study, we used the MODIS EVI, MODIS LST data and China’s Land Use/Cover Datasets (CLUDs) to investigate the temporal variations of urban heat island intensity and urbanization effects on LSP in Northeast China during 2001–2015. Land surface temperature (LST) and phenology differences between urban and rural areas represented the urban heat island intensity and urbanization effects on LSP, respectively. Mann-kendall nonparametric test and Sen's slope were used to evaluating the trends of urbanization effects on LSP and urban heat island intensity. The results indicated that the average land surface phenology (LSP) during 2001–2015 was characterized by high spatial heterogeneity. The start of the growing season (SOS) in old urban area had become earlier and earlier than rural area and the differences of SOS between urbanized area and the rural area changed greatly during 2001–2015 (−0.79 days/year, p < 0.01). Meanwhile, the length of the growing season (LOS) in urban and adjacent areas had become increasingly longer than rural area especially in urbanized area (0.92 days/year, p < 0.01), but the differences of the end of the growing season (EOS) between urban and adjacent areas did not change significantly. Next, the UHII increased in spring and autumn during the whole study period. Moreover, the correlation analysis indicated that the increasing urban heat island intensity in spring contributed greatly to the increases of urbanization effects on SOS, but the increasing urban heat island intensity in autumn did not lead to the increases of urbanization effects on EOS in Northeast China.

Although floods, as well as other natural disasters, can be considered relevant causes of intra-generational inequalities, the frequent catastrophes and the resulting damages to territory reflect the generalized indifference about inter-generational justice. Societal concerns, such as land protection, typically involve the administrative system performing proactive policies in the perspective of inter-generational solidarity, but subsidiarity has made more and more independent the local communities. As a consequence, the attention toward the long run effects – typically concerning the territorial system, as a whole, at the geographical scale – has been dispersed, and the proactive policies coming from the central government has became more ineffective. Regarding the case of the flood happened in 2009 in the Fiumedinisi-Capo Peloro hydraulic basin, in the northeastern part of Sicily, Italy, we propose an economic valuation – carried out by performing the method of the imputed preferences – in order to compare the expenses incurred by the public authorities responsible for protecting the territory to the costs of the rehabilitation of the damaged areas. Some considerations about the economic significance of the proactive policies for the arrangement of territory are addressed according to the role played by the social discount rate in the inter-temporal economic calculation.

This study analyses the changes in land use in the Sado estuary (West-Central Portugal) based on a multitemporal analysis of cartographic data from the 19th century and remote sensing land use maps from the 21st century, updated by field work. A GIS plotting of land-use evolution is summarized in a quantitative table. The comparison shows the changes in land use, with increasing occupation by human economic activities, including extensive agriculture and forestry, as well as localized urbanization and industrialization. The main elements of the landscape impacted by anthropogenic uses were: i) hydrography - river dams affected the flow dynamics and sedimentary processes in the estuary; ii) vegetation – increasing agriculture and forestry reduced the areas of native vegetation, nowadays mostly occupied by vineyards, pine forests and cork oaks. iii) wetlands - tidal and alluvial plains are being occupied by rice cultivation, aquaculture, industries, and ports; iv) coastal dunes – new developments are occupying large areas of Holocene coastal dunes; v) natural environment – mining and dredging affected some habitats and biodiversity. This analysis is intended to help the territorial organization of present and future economic activities, as well as to reduce environmental and social problems, promoting long-term sustainability of this rapidly evolving region.

Our study clarified what is the same or not between Tier 1(Tokyo) and Tier 2(Kansai) metropolitan areas on shrinking cities problems. Both of metropolitan areas will dramatically decrease the Housing Asset Value (HAV) where areas of bedroom communities are located. On the other hand, compared to Tokyo, Kansai has been hit by decline at a faster pace. This raises the question of whether Kansai will be more or less impoverished by the deflation of the HAV. According to our results, Kansai municipalities should expect the HAV losses of 38% by 2045, but the HAV losses would be higher in the northern suburbs of Osaka. Kansai has to face the effects of the HAV deflation faster than Tokyo. But Tokyo has a neck of higher residential land price, the income multiplier of the HAV per household is about 4. The HAV deflation hits more severe problems for elderly households in Tokyo. Considering our study, Tier 2 metropolitan area is much faster effects of the HAV deflation, but Tier 1 metropolitan area has more serious social problem than Tier 2. Hence, there are different problems of different natures rather than which one is more severely affected by the deflation of the HAV.

The purpose of this study is to assess the solid waste management status and practice in Sendafa town, Oromia regional state residents. In order to achieve this goal, the researcher intends to employ both primary and secondary data from the Sendafa town municipality. With the aid of multi-cluster sampling and a purposive sampling method, the researchers chose a sample size of 398 people and 10 interview responders. To utilize a systematic sampling technique at intervals of residences, individual samples were chosen. Quantitative data was cleaned and analysed using STATA software. A multiple linear regression model and logistic regression other descriptive statistics methods were then used to change the results. The qualitative data were imported, coded, and thematised using ATLAS.ti.9 in order to prepare respondents' interviews for analysis. The findings indicate that residents' poor solid waste management practices are a result of a lack of awareness, low family income transportation issues, issues with waste collectors, a lack of a sense of responsibility and belonging, and a failure to enforce current solid waste management laws. Solid waste accumulates near roads, bridges, and residential areas that are close to landfills, contaminating the area and leading to diseases like TB and Asthma (and other related health issues in children and adults who live there). Thus, researcher recommends that to have sustainable solid waste management the town administrators should have plan to develop awareness creation symposium or panel of discussion, resolve transportation issues, monitor and guide the routine activities of waste collectors, develop sense of belongingness for themselves and for the community, develop integrated solid waste land fill projects and working with all stakeholders like NGO and health institution will minimize the adverse effect of improper solid waste management. Keywords: Solid Waste, Status of Solid Waste Management, Land fill site suitability

In addition to changes in the amount of rain, changes in land use upstream are considered a factor that directly affects the maximum runoff flow in a basin, especially in areas that have experienced floods and flash floods. This research article presents the application of the SWAT model to assess runoff in areas that have experienced flash floods, in order to analyze the proportion of land use change to the maximum runoff. Study areas that had experienced flash floods were in 3 basins in Thailand (Lam Saphung Basin, Phrom River Basin, and Chern River Basin Part 1 which is a subbasin of the Nam Chi River Basin). This study analyzed two main factors that influence runoff in the river basin: Changes in rainfall and changes in land use by considering 2 simulation situations.: (1) Changes in land use affecting runoff assessed by considering land use maps in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021 when using rainfall data only in the year 2021 for all cases, and (2) Changes in the amount of rainfall influencing runoff by considering the rainfall record in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021 when using the land use data only in the year 2021 for all cases. The results of the study found that the SWAT model can be effectively applied to estimate annual runoff in areas that have experienced flash floods under 8 parameters with R2 values of 0.74, 0.82 and 0.74 for the Lam Saphung River Basin and the Phrom River Basin and the Chern River Basin Part 1 respectively. In addition, it was found that the proportion of land use changes that involved changes from forest areas to residential areas was the greatest from 2008 to 2010 in the Phrom River Basin and Chern River Basin Part 1. This resulted in an increase in the maximum runoff amount of 77.78% and 46.87%, respectively. When land use was constant, it was found that the rainfall in 2010, which was the highest, also had the greatest impact on the runoff in all 3 areas.

In the context of the energy transition, the integration of land use considerations into energy planning is increasingly vital, especially in scenarios where land availability is a constraint. This study addresses the challenge of incorporating land-use aspects into Energy System Optimization Models (ESOMs), with a focus on the unique context of Pantelleria Island. It aims to bridge the gap in methodologies for renewable energy potential assessment and model integration, considering the critical role of land pricing and availability. It combines geospatial data aggregation with model adaptation to include detailed land use aspects. Findings highlight the substantial impact of land costs on renewable energy planning, with land pricing significantly altering model outcomes. This research offers key insights for sustainable energy planning and underscores the importance of considering land use in energy transition strategies.

The role of land surface temperature (LST) is of utmost importance in multiple academic disciplines such as climatology, hydrology, ecology, and meteorology. Until to now, many methods have been proposed to estimate LST from satellite thermal infrared data. The Thermal Infrared Sensor (IRS) on the Chinese ZY1-02E satellite is a pivotal instrument employed for gathering thermal infrared (TIR) data of land surfaces. The objective of this research is to evaluate the feasibility of a single-channel approach based on water vapor scaling (WVS) for deriving LST from ZY1-02E IRS data because of its wide spectrum range, i.e., 7~12μm, affected strongly by both atmospheric water vapor and ozone. Three study areas, namely Baotou, Heihe River Basin, and Yantai-sea sites, were selected as validation sites to evaluate the LST inversion accuracy. This evaluation was also conducted by cross-comparison between the retrieved LST and MODIS LST product. The results revealed that the WVS-based method exhibited an average bias of 0.63K and an RMSE of 1.62K compared to the in-situ LSTs. The WVS-based method demonstrated reasonable accuracy through cross-validation with the MODIS LST product, with an average bias of 0.77K and RMSE of 2.0K. These findings provide that the WVS-based method is effective to estimate LST from ZY1-02E IRS data.