Land use changes and transnational migration

This paper reviews the research on the drivers of regional land use change.The study of regional land use change drivers is to reveal the real motivation behind the land use change and its interacting mechanism in the aspect of the typical region,so as to simulate and predict the process of land use change.Presently,studies rooting from different natural and socioeconomic backgrounds,and from different scales,have deepened the understanding and cognition of regional land use change driving forces.In order to confirm the fit quantifiable index to embody the driving effect of outer driving factor,the study in the future need to be related with a special region determined by the self-organization of land use system and the complexity of its inner driving forces function.To comprehensively identify the driving factor of land use system under the control of different states and its multiple spatial-temporal scales domino effect,and to establish the regional land use change dynamic models of comprehensive simulation,will reduce the situation of land use system impacted by critical threshold and break.Providing a scientific understanding of the causes and process of regional land use change,the measurements of how,why and where' of current or future changes in regional land use,the impacts of different land use decisions,and the ways that decisions are affected by a changing environment and increasing ecological variability are priority areas for research:(1) identification of divers of regional land use change and scale dependency of their effects;(2) contribution quantification of drivers of regional land use change and their non-uniform distributions in specific region;and(3) incorporation of biophysical feedbacks in land use change models.These issues are very basic.The incorporation of dynamic feedbacks between changing regional land use and changing environmental conditions and vice versa,therefore needs to focus on solving these problems.These findings will be useful to supply fine ground and knowledge for establishing appropriate land use practices,and be important policy implications for the promotion of environmentally and economically sound land use.

The impact of land use- and climate change on the managed eco-geomorphic balance in the Alps

Water Accounting Plus for Water Resources Reporting and River Basin Planning

The Jinan Spring Area serves as a representative of northern China’s karst regions. To explore the land-use change characteristics and their driving mechanisms, six periods of Landsat series land-use data were collected for the years 1986, 1995, 2000, 2009, 2016 and 2022. A Random Forest model was employed for classifying the remote sensing data, while the land use dynamic and land use transfer matrix were used to analyse the scale, composition, morphology, pattern and spatial and temporal characteristics of land use changes from 1986 to 2022. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to quantitatively assessed the intensity of the driving factors influencing land use dynamics. The findings revealed thatthe land use types in Jinan are predominantly arable land and woodland, accounting for over 70%, the cultivated land accounted for the highest proportion, 50.95% of the total area in 2022, and decreased by 603.04 km2 during the study period, which was mainly manifested by the conversion of cultivated land around the urban area to construction land, and the construction land became the main type of cultivated land transferring out of the urban area in the 2000–2009 period, which reached 18.2 km2/y, reflecting the impact of rapid urbanisation and population growth; the rate slowed down after that, and the rate dropped to 11 km2/y in 2016–2022 the rate falls to 11 km2/y. Forest land with an increased by 303.78 km2, reflecting the impact of urban policies promoting ecological conservation, while construction land expanded by 514 km2, becoming the third-largest land-use type by 2016 due to conversions from arable land. Grassland, however, saw a net decline of 224.01 km2 as transfers outpaced gains. PCA identified population growth, economic development, and precipitation variability as the main drivers of land-use changes, highlighting the complex interplay of human activities and climatic factors. This study systematically analyzes long-term land use changes from 1986 to 2022, filling previous gaps in temporal data, and provides a comprehensive evaluation of land-use dynamics and driving mechanisms in a karst hydrological region. It delineates the area, morphology, structure, and spatial patterns of seven land use types, including arable land, forest land, grassland, and built-up land. By integrating advanced analytical methods, it offers a valuable framework for understanding and managing land-use transformations in similar sensitive ecosystems worldwide, balancing development with ecological stability.

Modelling the drivers of land use and land cover change of the great Amanzule wetland ecosystem to inform the development policy of the southwestern oil-rich region of Ghana

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to analyze changes in land use, specifically residential area expansion, in South Tangerang City and identify the factors that influence land use change.Design/methodology/approachThe study used remote sensing methods in ArcGIS 10.8 for data analysis and processing, including spatial analysis and identification of land use changes. The study analyzed satellite images from 2010 and 2020 to identify changes in land use in South Tangerang City over the ten-year period.FindingsThe study found that the most significant land use changes in South Tangerang City between 2010 and 2020 were the reduction of mixed plantation area and the expansion of residential areas. The study identified the development of small townships by private developers as the main factor that influenced land use change in South Tangerang City.Research limitations/implicationsThe study has several limitations, including a focus on only one aspect of land use change (i.e. residential area expansion), limited scope of the study area (South Tangerang City) and a reliance on remote sensing methods for data analysis.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study can be used by policymakers and city planners to develop sustainable land use planning strategies that balance the need for urban development with environmental and social concerns. By understanding the factors that drive land use changes in South Tangerang City, policymakers can develop policies that encourage sustainable urban growth and development while preserving natural resources and protecting the environment.Social implicationsThe study has social implications as the expansion of residential areas in South Tangerang City indicates a growing demand for housing in the area. The study highlights the importance of developing affordable and sustainable housing solutions to meet the needs of the growing population in South Tangerang City. Additionally, the study emphasizes the importance of understanding the social and economic factors that drive land use change and their implications for the well-being of local communities.Originality/valueThe residential area development in South Tangerang City is driven by private developers who make small independent cities that have all facilities in one area. These small cities attract people to reside and also drive high population growth in South Tangerang City, considering it is a buffer city of Jakarta that has good infrastructure development.

Much of literature on the Sahel-savannah region of West Africa centres on whether the region is a degraded version of a former densely wooded landscape and whether it is becoming further desertified. The dominant view of many West African parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification asserts that this zone is increasingly being desertified due to climate change and destructive practices of peasant agriculture. Other researchers have challenged this claim and argued that the high climate variability characterising the savannah zone is responsible for fluctuations in vegetation cover. Although recent research supports the latter view, this perspective has been ignored by Ghana’s National Action Plan in favour of the desertification discourse. The Plan also ignores the cumulative effects of colonial and postcolonial government policies and market forces in influencing land use and vegetation changes in the savannah zone. This thesis investigates the changing patterns of land use and land cover changes in the savannah region of northeast Ghana. It adopts a long-term historical perspective for understanding the interactions and combined influences of climate variability, political-economic factors and perceptions of local communities on changes in vegetation cover. It uses archival records, in-depth interviews and social participatory GIS mapping techniques to examine the combined influences of political-economic factors and rainfall variability on vegetation distribution and cropping patterns. The historical analysis shows that pre-colonial traditional knowledge systems were ignored by the colonial authorities who altered the organisation of settlements and agriculture to benefit the interests of colonial enterprise. In the early twentieth century, the colonial government sought to increase agricultural production by imposing strict environmental ‘conservation’ measures on peasants, claiming that these communities had destroyed a previously dense forested region and turned it into a degraded savannah. The postcolonial governments continued to assert this claim against local communities and pushed for agricultural industrialisation to promote economic development. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, the Sahel droughts and bushfires severely affected agricultural production and reduced tree cover in northeast Ghana. This reinforced and institutionalised the prevailing view that traditional farming methods of local peasant communities under severe drought conditions were threatening to turn the savannah into a desert. The long-term rainfall analysis showed high inter-annual and intra-seasonal variability. This variability was reflected in the cropping patterns, areas under cultivation and tree cover. In wetter years, agriculture extended into areas that had developed tree cover, while in drier years, tree cover extended into previously cultivated land. Agriculture and tree cover showed similar variation between the annual wet and dry seasons. The GIS analysis and perception-based mapping also confirmed this variability in seasonal and annual variations in rainfall, showing ‘greening’ and afforestation in some areas and tree cover reduction in other areas. Changes in the government’s agricultural and land management policies were also critical drivers in altering crop and tree cover. Local communities highlighted government policies and market conditions as prime factors influencing their land use decisions, and emphasised that these factors reduced their capacity to respond effectively to the climate fluctuations typical of the Sahel-savannah region. The thesis concludes by showing that northeast Ghana has never been a zone of desertification, but rather a natural savannah zone characterised by high fluctuation in rainfall and vegetation cover both in the short and longer terms. It supports the arguments that high climate variability affects fluctuations in vegetation cover in the savannah zone. In addition, the thesis shows that the long-term influences of colonial and postcolonial government policies and market forces have contributed to greater variability in vegetation cover within this highly variable climatic zone.

Understanding the drivers of the land use land cover change is essential for development of appropriate land use system. The study conducted in north-western Ethiopia Banja district aimed to identify the direct and indirect drivers behind the LULC changes that had occurred. The study uses multistage sampling technique to draw 145 randomly selected households. Both primary and secondary data sources were used for this purpose. Descriptive statics and DPSIR ranking index model used to analyse data from household surveys to rank drivers of land use change from agricultural land to Acacia plantations or forestland. Decline of soil infertility for crop production, use of tree for income generation and increase of demand for forest products were identified as direct drivers of LULC, whereas high cost of agricultural input, soil erosion and land degradation and lack of technology to improve agricultural practice, were indirect drivers of LULC from agriculture to Acacia plantation. The result of binary logistics regression shows that total land holding, annual income, and the distance from residence to woodlot are statistically significant variables that influence positively farmers’ decisions to change their farmland to Acacia plantations, whereas households’ educational status negatively influences farmers’ decisions to change their farmland to plantation land. Due to land use change from agricultural to plantation forest currently farmers, face lack of cropland, decreased crop production and shortage of animal fodder. On the contrary, they perceived that improvement of soil fertility, reduced land for grazing and biodiversity. Then it is to recommend that the concerned body should promote appropriate land use policy centred on major drivers of land use system from agricultural to forestland

Markov model was used to represent the land-use change data for several reasons.Firstly,land use change is not unidirectional in nature.A given parcel of land theoretically may change from one category of land-use to any other at any time.Markovian analysis uses matrices that represent all the multi-directional land-use changes between all the mutually exclusive land-use categories.Land use changes and scenarios in Lhasa district were analyzed in this paper using Markov model.The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Land use changes in Lhasa district during the last ten years were related to this period's integrated agricultural development project.In 10 years from 1990 to 2000,186.53 ha of cultivated land were converted into forest land,accounting for 54.857% of the total cultivated land area converting into the other land use categories;and 130.05 ha were converted into residential area,being 38.247%.The remaining limited area was converted into the other land use categories such as rangeland and water body. (2) The most extensive changes of land use from 1990 to 2000 in Lhasa district was rangeland conversion.Rangeland was converted into cultivated land,horticultural land,forestland,residential area and water body.Among them,2333.33 ha of forestland were converted from rangeland,or 94.093 %,the largest of all in area.These land use changes were related directly to the integrated development and construction project carried out in the central Tibetan Plateau in the mid 1990s.Because of the implementation of biological and engineering measures consisting of large scale of forestation and construction of field safeguarding forest,since the 1990s,remarkable effects in soil erosion control have been obtained through improving surface vegetation and land cover conditions. (3) Markov chain model prediction indicated that the general trends of land use changes,in Lhasa district in future were that cultivated land,rangeland,water body and unused land will decrease and forest,horticultural land and residential area will increase. (4) It should be pointed out that since there are many factors impacting land use changes,in particular in a short period of time,policies,regulations,important regional projects and human activities and other uncertain factors will affect regional land use changes,hence causing certain errors in prediction accuracy of land use changes in Lhasa district. (5) The simulated areas of land use changes in the future in Lhasa district by Markov mode are very close to the planning areas of land use changes of Tibet,therefore,land use change scenario based on the Markov model has an important value for making land use plan.

As one of the most important study fields of global change, land use and land cover change has significant impacts on regional and global climate, soil characteristics, and function of terrestrial ecosystem. Most researchers, both in China and abroad, have given much more attentions to the study on land use types and the laws of regional land cover change with synthetic analysis of the factors that influence land use and land cover change. In recent years, some Chinese researchers have carried on studies in this field by stationary inspection methodology, e.g., Professor Fu Buojie and others studied the impacts of land use and land cover change on soil nutrients, regional hydrological condition in loess hilly areas and Zunhua low mountainous areas in Hebei province, Professor Shi Peijun and others studied the impacts of land use and land cover change on natural agricultural disasters in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on the basis of long period investigations and statistical materials. But few researchers studied the impact of land use and land cover change on soil erosion by stationary methodology, and few papers have been published in this area. This paper studied the impacts of land use and land cover change on soil erosion in Fujian mountainous areas on the basis of analysis on long period observational and experimental materials at Jianou Niukenglong Experimental Station and the Provincial Soil and Water Conservation Station, researched soil erosion mechanisms of mountain grassland ecosystem, and different soil erosion modulus under different land use and land cover types. The analytical results indicate that the coefficient of runoff has minus linear relation with grassland coverage, and the modulus of soil erosion has index relation with grassland coverage. This paper also studied the mechanisms and processes of land cover impacting runoff and soil erosion, i.e., land cover influences runoff and soil erosion through the following processes: 1) The grassland cover reduces the forces of rainfall that beats on earth surface, which will impact soil erosion on the surface of the earth, grassland cover has minus index relation with soil erosion modulus, and minus linear relation with coefficient of runoff. 2)The roots of vegetation strengthens the erosion resisting capacity of soils through interluding, twinning and fixing forces on soil particles, and increases the absorbing water capacity of soils . 3) The increase of soil organic material concentration makes the soil particles and structure more and more stable. This paper also points out that there are other mechanisms and processes that need to be further studied, e.g., the relation between land use/land cover and runoff coefficient, the variations of different vegetation's impacts on soil erosion,etc.

Modification of the Earth’s surface i.e. land use change, is the main human activity for survival and is the key player in the management of natural resources, including water. Little attention has, however, been given to understand the role the territorial vegetation changes may play in strategic management of water resources. In the basin of Aswa northern Uganda, the changes in land use due to complex demographic and social economic factors is among the numerous challenges faced in management of the limited water resources in the area. The aim of the current study was to explore the opportunities land use changes in the basin may offer to water resources management, looking mainly at the expansion in future agriculture and afforestation as the critical land use change issues. The study was structured into four broad objectives: The first objective was to generate the reference land use dataset (1986 & 2001). The available techniques (the supervised and the unsupervised image classification) were explored using Landsat multi-spectral images. Through careful evaluation, the supervised image classification with the best classification accuracy of 81.48% was used to generate 1986 and 2001 land use maps. The second objectives of the study was to generate experimental land use scenarios required for testing the effect of spatial land use policies on hydrologic processes in the basin. The Multi-criteria-GIS methodology was developed and six experimental land use scenarios were generated using simple but consistence set of bio-physical and socio-economic parameters. The third objective was to customise the hydrologic process model SWAT that was used to simulate the hydrologic impact of the land use change scenarios. The calibration of the hydrologic model SWAT used monthly historical streamflow records from 1970 to 1974 recorded at the basin outlet. The model was manually calibrated using the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient as objective function. The efficiency of the model during calibration was 0.46. Validation of the model using an independence monthly streamflow records from 1975 to 1978 was done and the model efficiency was 0.66, much better than in calibration period. The forth and last objective of the study was to simulate the hydrologic processes in the reference years and the hydrologic processes impacted by the land use change scenarios and to evaluate how this impact affects water resources management strategies. An independent validation of the model to identify the validity of extending the optimal parameters set in simulation of 2001 and land use change hydrologic processes was carried out by comparing the simulated actual evapotranspiration fraction with estimated actual evapotranspiration fraction obtained using surface energy balance method and the thermal MODIS images. Validation indicated acceptable model performance in simulating 2001 hydrologic processes, with a spatial correlation coefficient of 0.45. The application of the model in simulations of the hydrologic processes in the reference years noted that 2001 had more water yield than 1986 by 9.2 mm. The analysis of the impact of land use change in the reference years indicated an increase of 2.52 mm of water yield in the year 2001. Simulation of the hydrologic impact of the experimental land use indicated that Land use types, which in this study were restricted to plantation forest and generic agriculture, land use extent and location of the land use with respect to precipitation rate and amount, greatly influence the hydrologic process of the basin and the net water yield. It was noted that the water yield of the basin can be significantly decreased by over 15%, if more than 37% of the plantation forests are introduced in the wet zone. In the dry sub-basins however, afforestation of up to 42% had insignificant effect on water yield, which could therefore be exploited so as to offset the afforestation pressure in the wet sub-basin while at the same time enhancing the basin water yield. The effect of agricultural land use change on water yield was however less sensitive to climatic zones. 53% increase in agricultural land cover responded with an increase in water yield by about 27%.

Integrated assessment of the climate and landuse change impact on hydrology and water quality in the Songkhram River Basin, Thailand

In this paper, the Spatial-Markov model, which was based on the theory of Markov process and spatial analysis techniques, was proposed to simulate land use change and landscape dynamics. By the Spatial-Markov model, the study area could be divided into numerous lattices and land use change in each lattices was simulated separately by the Markov process model. The outputs of the model include a set of ratio scale images and a nominal scale image. The whole process of the model was fulfilled by compiling programs with AML in ArcGIS 9.3. The coastal area of Shandong province was selected as the case study area. Land use maps were extracted based on Landsat TM/ETM+ images captured in 2000, 2005, and 2010 respectively. Firstly, characteristics of land use change and landscape dynamics were analyzed. It showed that, from 2000 to 2010, urban area and rural settlement expanded dramatically by massively occupying farmland, which, in turn, drove grassland reclaimed to farmland. At the landscape level, the landscape fragmentation increased, and both the diversity and evenness of the landscape increased. Secondly, using land use maps in 2000 and 2005, the Spatial-Markov model was developed to simulate the land use map in 2010 at a spatial scale of 500 m. At the same time, the CA-Markov model was selected for model comparison, in specific, eleven driving factors were selected and the Logistic regression method was used to create the transitional maps for CA. Both Kappa coefficient and landscape indices were introduced to evaluate and compare the two models. It showed that the Spatial-Markov model not only achieved much higher Kappa coefficient, but also much better landscape indices than the CA-Markov model. Therefore, the Spatial-Markov model was applied to predict land use change and landscape dynamics in the next decade. Moreover, the prediction result shows that, from 2010 to 2020, areas of urban area and rural settlement will go on increasing, while areas of farmland will continue to decline. At the landscape level, all the landscape indices will follow their historical trend except for fractal dimension. As to the landscape indices at the class level, all landscape types will follow the same trend as before except for water and unused land.

اهداف: پایش تغییرات کاربری‌ها و درک پویایی آن در یک حوضۀ آبخیز، از جایگاه خاصی در مدیریت پایدار آن حوضه برخوردار است. هدف تحقیق حاضر، استفاده از سنجش از دور و GIS جهت تهیۀ نقشۀ تغییرات و شناسایی انتقالات کاربری اراضی و پوشش زمین با به‌کارگیری ماتریس انتقال و تصاویر ماهوارۀ لندست در حوضۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه می‌باشد. روش: جهت انجام تحقیق، از تصاویر ماهوارۀ لندست در دورۀ زمانی 2015 ـ 1988 استفاده گردید. بدین‌منظور پس از انجام پیش‌پردازش‌های موردنظر، جهت انجام طبقه‌بندی از روش‌های ماشین‌بردار پشتیبان و روشیءگرا استفاده و سپس اعتبارسنجی گردیدند. همچنین جهت برآورد میزان انتقالات و دیگر ویژگی‌های حوضۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه، ابتدا ماتریس انتقالی استخراج شده و سپس طبقه‌بندی شئ‌گرا بین دوره‌های زمانی 2015ـ1988 ارائه شد. سپس با استفاده از فرمول‌های موردنظر، میزان پایداری، افزایش، کاهش، تغییرات کل، تغییرات خالص و مبادلۀ همزمان کاربری‌های اراضی و پوشش زمین مشخص گردید. یافته‌ها/ نتایج: پس از ارزیابی صحت، صحت کلی برای نقشه‌های حاصل از ماشین بردار پشتیبان و روش شئ‌گرا به‌ترتیب برابر با 94 و 92 درصد و مقدار کاپای آنها به‌ترتیب 92 و 89 برآورد شد که نشان‌دهندۀ برتری روش شئ‌گرا در مقایسه با روش ماشین بردار پشتیبان است. در کل، هر دو روش طبقه‌بندی توانستند صحت قابل‌قبولی برای نقشه‌های کاربری اراضی و پوشش زمین ارائه دهند. نتایج حاصل از انتقالات نشان داد به‌طور میانگین، 59 درصد از چهرۀ زمین در حوضۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه در فاصلۀ زمانی 2015ـ 1988 پایداری پوشش داشته است، که بیشترین میزان این تداوم براساس مقدار این کاربری در فاصلۀ زمانی 2015ـ1988 مربوطه به مناطق مسکونی می-باشد. حدود 14 درصد از سطح حوزۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه به‌صورت تبادل همزمان بوده است. همچنین سطوح آبی حوضۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه در دورۀ زمانی فوق، بیشترین ازدست‌دادگی و کمترین تبادل همزمان را تجربه کرده است. نتیجه‌گیری: حوضۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه در این فاصلۀ زمانی (2015ـ1988) تغییرات و انتقالات شدیدی را تجربه کرده است، تاجایی‌که تنها 59 درصد از چهرۀ زمین، ثابت مانده و قسمت‌های دیگر، انواعی از انتقال‌ها را تجربه کرده‌اند. همچنین سطوح آبی و سپس مراتع، بیشترین آسیب-پذیری را تجربه کرده‌اند که نشان از افزایش اراضی فاقد پوشش و اراضی زراعی (کشاورزی) می-باشد. این تجزیه‌وتحلیل ما را به سنجش و تجسم میزان انتقالات عمدۀ LULC درجهت برنامه‌ریزی آیندۀ حوضۀ آبخیز دریاچۀ ارومیه توصیه می‌کند.

As one of the last agricultural frontiers of the humid tropics, Amazonia is the largest area of the world currently undergoing frontier settlement. Although the earliest intrusions of foreign populations into Amazonia date from pre-Hispanic times, the large-scale entrance of peasant colonists into the vast region is a recent phenomenon. Much of this movement represents the spontaneous migration of peoples, but governments in the region have also become increasingly interested in opening up and integrating Amazonia to national and international economies. These actions are frequently seen as potential solutions to a number of national problems, including the need to increase agricultural production, correct spatial imbalances in the distribution of population, exploit frontier lands for reasons of national security, and defuse potentially serious political problems resulting from the existing agrarian structure, landlessness, and unemployment. The upper basin of the Amazon in Ecuador, bordering on the eastern slopes of the Andes, is one such area of frontier settlement. Recent decades have witnessed the rapid conversion of these Amazonian forests to agricultural uses through a series of schemes bearing such labels as land development and colonization. Most forest intervention in the region has come at the hands of colonist farmers attempting to establish land claims along transport routes originally constructed to aid in petroleum exploration and exploitation. These are farmers who formerly have made a living in long-established farmlands and who, for various reasons (population pressures, pervasive poverty, maldistribution of farmland, lack of inputs for intensive cultivation, lack of nonagrarian livelihood opportunities, and generally inadequate rural development) have been increasingly squeezed out of their homelands. A marginal person by virtue of his low socioeconomic and political status, the farmer often perceives