History Research Articles

Norwid’s place in culture

Even in today’s “postmodern” world, Norwid cannot be reduced to a single formula. He is rather a “constellation,” requiring that readers join the “continual discussion” on issues specific to a given era. His focus is on humanity, which he regards from a dualist perspective that necessitates pursuing a synthesis of matter and spirit under the sign of ethical universalism. Norwid refers to the “cupola of ‘a monologue-that-keeps-parabolizing-itself’” andregards culture as the parable of the world. His original aesthetics of “whiteness” refers, as it were, to the biblical “gentle gust of wind,” which announces God’s presence and indicates the rejection of the Romantic veneration for volcanoes, which he contrasts with the importance of work. This kind of philosophy, developed by Brzozowski, Tischner and John Paul II, has led to the self-limiting revolution of Solidarity in the years 1980-81, and ultimately to the de-legitimization and fall of communism; finally, after the bloody myth of the French Revolution reigned for two hundred years, this philosophy altered the paradigm of historical changes around the world. Norwid elaborated on the industrial-era Romanticism and opposed martyrological messianism, developing the original idea of a “messianism of work,”linking it with a vision of human Church, which “burns through the Globe with conscience.”He would contrast the global church with the parochial “church-turned-living-room.”Human beings count more than institutions, he argued, just like goodness prevails over formal sacraments. With the ultimate goal defined as the resurrection of the world, art becomes a church of work. Norwid embraced an anthropocentric perspective, in which human beings are called upon “to un-make” [od-poczynać] the mistakes of the past, and thus to begin afresh at a whole new level. With his language and style Norwid was constructing a new social stratum: intelligentsia (Łapiński), understanding it as the nation’s copula, i.e. the unifying force of conscienceand the collective consciousness. It would form an interpersonal, horizontal transcendence spanning the length and breadth of societies. The opposite of nation and its culture is “empire” – the root of subjugation – which particularly enslaved Central and Eastern Europe. Of special importance is the clash between Asian civilization and the “Roman” one, i.e. Christianity or Western Europe. However, the poet opposes Slavs to both the Westerners and the Easterners, emphasizing the processualand not the essentialistcharacter of national cultures. The question whether Norwid’s work is fundamentally dialogic or monologic in character continues to divide scholars. However, Norwid is in a way a Master or teacherwho embodies the Other and incarnates Wisdom in his Voice and Gesture. The nature of Wisdom is anthropocentric because man is a priest, although “involuntary / And immature,” which abolishes the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Through his ethical universalism Norwid provides a solution to the Enlightenment crisis of universal reason. Emancipation of the individual should not entail abandoning a sense of belonging, which is something that Norwid’s modernism shares with that of Central Europeans (Ch. Delsol). Understood as the expression of collective desires, cultures shape responsibility and a sense of belonging, at the same time constituting an answer to the crisis of narcissistic individualism characteristic for our times.

Norwid’s drama of “social transfigurations”

The article discusses Norwid’s concept of drama and theatre; notably, he assumes their close relationship with social life and its historical changes. Basing on analyses of meta-dramatic and meta-theatrical statements made by the poet, contained primarily in the essays “Widowiska w ogóle uważane” and “Białe kwiaty” [Performances considered in general; White flowers], in passages from lectures on Słowacki (O Juliuszu Słowackim), and in the introduction to Pierścień Wielkiej-Damy [The Ring of a Great Lady], it is possible to formulate the thesis that Norwid intentionally developed a vision of drama based on the idea of “social transfigurations.”What is more, the character of his dramatic works enables one to interpret his particular theatrical pieces in the light of anthropological and sociological categories of social drama and cultural performance. After all, most of Norwid’s dramatic works depict situations of social change in terms of rites of passage and theatricalized social practices, e.g. social ceremonies or ritualized interactions. As a result, Norwidian drama becomes an artistic representation of forces shaping collective life, a lens facilitating their understanding in the spirit of social anthropology, and an important factor in the formation of man.

Understanding Japan's Land-use Dynamics between 1987 and 2050 using Land Accounting and Scenario Analysis

Amidst global concerns about land use change and its far-reaching impact on biodiversity and human well-being, there is a growing need to understand how land use stock and flow changes over time through land use accounting. While existing studies on land accounting have focused on historical land changes, little attention has been paid to future transitions. This study assessed historical patterns and projected future shifts in land use dynamics from 1987 to 2050 across Japan by combining high-resolution land use and land cover datasets, land change simulations, and land accounting. In the analyses, particular attention was paid to the historical and future trends of farmland abandonment by leveraging data at 100-m resolution built on national vegetation surveys. High-resolution analysis of farmland abandonment issue with national scale in Japan is a novelty. From 1987 to 1998, the land stock analysis results showed a pronounced marked increase in residential land (10.4%) and grassland (16.9%); the flow analysis results showed that urban residential sprawl expansion was mainly formed by secondary (32.6%) and plantation (21.1%) forest areas, coinciding with increasing population and economic growth. Projections from 2010 to 2050 indicate a marked increase in abandoned farmland (67.2% per decade), a trend influenced by rapid population decline and presumably agricultural policies, especially significant in regions such as Hokkaido and Kyushu. The findings of this study are crucial for shaping policy and decision-making, underlining the need for sustainable land management strategies that effectively balance urban growth, agricultural productivity, and environmental preservation in Japan.

Using Radiometric and Categorical Change to Create High-Accuracy Maps of Historical Land Cover Change in Watersheds of the Great Lakes Basin

Great Lakes Basin landscapes are undergoing rapid land cover and land use (LCLU) change. The goal for this study was to identify changes in land cover occurring in the Great Lakes Basin over three time periods to provide insights into historical land cover changes occurring on a bi-national watershed scale. To quantify potential impacts of anthropogenic changes on important yet vulnerable Great Lakes Wetland ecosystems, the historical changes in land cover over time are assessed via remote sensing. The goal is to better understand legacy effects on current conditions, including wetland gain and loss and the impacts of upland ecosystems on wetland health and water quality. Three key time periods with respect to Great Lakes water level changes and coastal wetland plant invasions were mapped using Landsat-derived land cover maps: 1985, 1995, and 2010. To address change between the three time periods of interest, we incorporate both radiometric and categorical change analysis and open-source tools available for assessing time series data including LandTrendr and TimeSync. Results include maps of annual land cover transition from 1985 to 1995 and 1995 to 2010 basin-wide and by ecoregion and an assessment of the magnitude and direction of change by land cover type. Basin-wide validated change results show approximately 776,854 ha of land changed from c.1980–1995 and approximately 998,400 ha of land changed from c.1995–2010. Both time periods displayed large net decreases in both deciduous forest and agricultural land and net increases in suburban cover. Change by ecoregion is reviewed in this study with many of the change types in central plains showing change in and out of agriculture and suburban land covers, the mixed wood plain ecoregion consisted of a mixture of agricultural, suburban, and forestry changes, and all top five change types in the mixed wood shield consisted of various stages of the forestry cycle for both time periods. In comparison with previous LCLU change studies, overall change products showed similar trends. The discussion reviews why, while most changes had accuracies better than 84%, accuracies found for change from urban to other classes and from other classes to agriculture were lower due to unique aspects of change in these classes which are not relevant for most change analyses applications. The study found a consistent loss in the deciduous forest area for much of the time studied, which is shown to influence the aquatic nitrogen implicated in the expansion of the invasive plant Phragmites australis in the Great Lakes Basin. This underscores the importance of LCLU maps, which allow for the quantification of historical land change in the watersheds of the Great Lakes where invasive species are expanding.

Personal Libraries in Russia: Research Results

The study of personal libraries is important for understanding socio-cultural processes that cannot be assessed by examining other historical events, phenomena and facts. The article deals with the monograph by O.N. Ilyina “Personal Libraries in Russia: Terminology and Historiography” (St. Petersburg, 2022), published in the series “The Book in Russia in the 19th — early 20th Century” by the Russian National Library and the winner of the All-Russian competition of scientific works on library science, bibliography and book studies in the nomination “The best scientific work in the field of library science” in 2023. The structure of the historical and book studies edition, the content of the chapters and the peculiarities of the author’s approach to the coverage of historiography, as well as the stages of the formation of terminology for the study of personal libraries in the domestic humanitarian knowledge in the second half of the 18th — early 21st century are characterized. The emphasis is made on the artificiality of the division of periods in the study of personal libraries in 1917, noted by O.N. Ilyina, because up to the end of the 1920s, book historians, whose professional career began before the October events of 1917, continued to carry out active research activities. This idea is confirmed by contemporary works devoted to the life and work of book historians and bibliographers born in the second half of the 19th century. Special attention is paid to the terminology for describing the history of book collections as a whole (and the collections within them), as well as book marks and marginalia in individual copies. A number of remarks on the design of the reference apparatus of the edition and the rubrication of the text are made, which, however, do not prevent interested readers. The quality, relevance and scientific novelty of the monograph are noted.

Attribution of the unprecedented heat event of August 2023 in Barcelona (Spain) to observed and projected global warming

The study analyses observed and numerical simulations of daily maximum and minimum temperature from 1920 onwards and to investigate the unprecedented heat event that occurred in 21–23 August 2023 in Barcelona. The historical changes in the intensity of such events, their expected future changes under scenarios of +1.5 °C, +2 °C, and + 3 °C, and the future exposure of populations to such kind of events are examined using the flow analogues approach. The findings indicate a significant increase in observed temperatures for similar heatwaves to those occurred in August 2023. The study also emphasises the impact of global warming on the intensification of heat events over the impact of urbanization. Additionally, after examining the role of natural variability in temperature changes, we concluded that global warming is the primary factor driving the increase in heatwave intensity. In terms of the frequency of such events, we found that extreme heat events, such as the August 2023 heatwave, will become 2 and 5 times more likely with a global summer warming of 2 °C and 3 °C, respectively. This will expose a large portion of the population to dangerous heat levels highlighting the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C to mitigate the impacts on urban populations.

Commercial Applications of Electronic Currencies

Digital payment systems, also known as digital money, digital currency, or electronic money, have come a long way since the invention of computer-based communication systems. From the requirement of human-to-machine monetary transactions, it has evolved. E-money is a virtual cash model that is making its way in the online and virtual transfer domain. The authorization transaction is conducted through traditional banking systems between the payer and the payee, which issues e-money accounts for these transactions. After this amount is booked and stored by banks, it can be verified and transferred to payers/payees as e-money. One important challenge in this domain is to reduce reliance on the identifying authority, and the corresponding e-money transactions should be as simple and secure as cash transactions. Bitcoin – the electronic currency introduced in 2009 by an anonymous author and designed to work independently of a central authority – is unique and often considered news. This ignores the general history of electronic currencies. In 1998, Wei Dai introduced B-money, an efficient product of minimizing communication that serves as a method of fees and rewards for providing limited resources. Also in 1998, Adam Back introduced Hashcash – a currency that ties real computing costs to solve increasingly difficult computational puzzles. In 1999, Nick Szabo introduced bit gold – a product offering small chained proof of work and conducted via broadcast. David Chaum’s eCash, based on blind signatures, was a technical principle in the paper in 1983, and in 1990 with Amos Fiat and Moni Naor in addition known as related technology.

El arduo despertar de un cambio lingüístico en la distancia comunicativa: paralelismos y divergencias con textos de la inmediatez en las relativas oblicuas del primer español moderno

Within the framework of historical sociolinguistics, the present study deals with the incidence of the textual axis at the dawn of a change affecting relative obliques in early modern Spanish. To this end, both the diffusion and the conditioning of the new variant (en + art + que), as opposed to the traditional one (en + que), are studied comparatively in two corpora composed of texts close to immediacy (private correspondence) and communicative distance (literary and legal-administrative) from the eighteenth century. The results of the study show, on the one hand, that the expansion of innovative forms was significantly greater in the documents of immediacy than in those of distance. On the other hand, it is found that, despite largely similar internal conditions, some of them exhibit idiosyncratic behaviour revealing a certain disparity in these initial stages of change. All this highlights the need to include textual typology in the study of language variation and change, alongside the usual linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Keywords: historical sociolinguistics, linguistic variation and change, discursive traditions, prepositional relative clauses, early modern Spanish

Moss differentiating the fluxes and sources of nitrogen deposition between 1984 and 2021 in a mountain area of Northern China

Anthropogenic reactive nitrogen (N) deposition has increased significantly since the industrial revolution. Northern China has become a global hotspot for N deposition. However, few studies have been conducted to quantify the historical changes of atmospheric N deposition fluxes and source contributions in Northern China.By investigating N contents and δ15N values of mosses at Mount Tai (Northern China) in 1984 and 2021, we reconstructed fluxes and source contributions of wet inorganic N deposition and evaluated their historical changes.Compared with 1984, moss N contents (from 1.7 ± 0.3% to 2.1 ± 0.4%) showed a significant increase in 2021, which was mainly attributed to a significant increase in nitrate N deposition fluxes at Mount Tai. Moss δ15N values (from −5.9 ± 0.9‰ to −5.2 ± 2.4‰) showed a slight increase from 1984 to 2021 at Mount Tai. The importance of combustion-related NH3 (including vehicle exhaust, coal combustion, and biomass burning) in 2021 (51.2%) were higher than those in 1984 (43.9%), while the importance of volatilization NH3 sources (including waste and fertilizers) in 2021 (48.8%) were lower than those in 1984 (56.1%). It was fossil-fuel NOx (from vehicle exhaust and coal combustion) (54.1%) rather than non-fossil fuel NOx (from biomass burning and microbial N cycles) (45.9%) dominated NOx emissions in both 1984 and 2021. Our results revealed significant contributions of combustion-related NH3 and fossil-fuel NOx sources emissions to the elevation of N deposition at Mount Tai in Northern China, which are beneficial for mitigating N emissions and conducting ecological benefit assessments in Northern China.

Temporal Changes in Geographic Range and Population Size of the Santa Cruz Black Salamander

Abstract The Santa Cruz black salamander Aneides niger is a priority 3 California species of special concern with a restricted geographic range confined to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Anecdotal observations suggest that the species was relatively abundant in the early 1900s, but it has become more difficult to find in the past few decades. To better understand if the species has undergone population size fluctuations, we analyzed mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data to examine levels of genetic variation and phylogeographic structure, and test for signatures of population size change. We then reconstructed the climatic suitability for the species to 1) determine if past climate fluctuations could have influenced range size and genetic diversity, and 2) estimate the effects of future climate change on geographic range suitability as a proxy for possible future population size change. Genetic analyses detected low levels of genetic variation and a general lack of genetic structuring, suggesting a recent genetic bottleneck. While neutrality tests of individual loci were nonsignificant, skyline plot and isolation-with-migration analyses detected a relatively recent reduction in population size. Interpretation of these genetic results should consider the limited number of localities and individuals sampled for this species. Climatic suitability for Santa Cruz black salamanders was much lower during the last glacial maximum, which could be the cause of the detected historical change in population size. Future projections of climatic suitability under a high-emission scenario suggest a dramatic geographic range restriction to coastal areas. These projections highlight the need for the protection of coastal habitat patches to preserve existing coastal populations, and to maintain connectivity between coastal and inland habitats to allow the westward movement of populations and genes in response to climate change.

Locating Nesting Sites for Critically Endangered Galápagos Pink Land Iguanas (Conolophus marthae).

Invasive alien species control is recognized worldwide as a priority action to preserve global biodiversity. However, a lack of general life history knowledge for threatened species can impede the effectiveness of conservation actions. Galápagos pink land iguanas (Conolophus marthae) are endemic to Wolf Volcano, Galápagos, Ecuador. These iguanas are threatened by invasive alien species, particularly feral cats, that may affect their small population size. To guarantee the long-term survival of C. marthae, the Galápagos National Park Directorate is considering, along with an ongoing campaign of feral cat control, the implementation of a head-start program. However, the success of this management strategy necessarily relies on the identification of pink iguana nesting grounds, which were still unknown at the onset of this study. We modeled the movement patterns of male and female iguanas during the reproductive season, using location data collected from custom-made remote tracking devices installed on adult pink iguanas in April 2021. We first calculated for each individual the vector of distances from its starting location, which was defined as net displacement. We then used net displacement as the response variable in a generalized additive mixed model with day of the year as the predictor. Based on the hypothesis that males and females may behaviorally differ after mating, we looked for female-specific migratory behavior suggesting females were moving toward nesting areas. The results obtained confirmed our hypothesis, as females exhibited a distinct migratory behavior, reaching a small plateau area inside of Wolf Volcano's caldera and ca. 400 m below the volcano's northern rim. Moreover, once inside the caldera, females displayed a more aggregated distribution pattern. The movement data obtained allowed Galápagos National Park rangers to locate individual pink iguana nests and subsequently to sight and collect the first observed hatchlings of the species. This work constitutes a necessary baseline to perform dedicated studies of pink iguana nests and emerging hatchling iguanas, which is an essential step toward the development of an effective head-start program.

Development Trends and Prospects of China s Animation Industry and Art

The similarities and differences between today s domestic animation films and the Chinese School animation of several decades ago are neither accidental nor coincidental. Through sorting out the history of Chinese animation, especially examining the emergence and development of China s animation industry, and conducting in-depth analysis of its historical changes and realistic choices, we can grasp the internal mechanism and law of animation art and industry development, and analyse the trend and direction of China s animation creation.

Выставочное пространство российских музеев как объект культуры

The article examines the exhibition space of Russian museums of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods as an object of culture. Emphasis is placed on its importance in shaping and reflecting social values, and the evolution of exhibition spaces, design elements, and the role they play in presenting, interpreting, and preserving cultural heritage are examined. The discussion covers the layout, interconnection and functionality of the various zones inside the museum. The tasks in designing architectural and artistic solutions for museum complexes are perhaps one of the most difficult in environmental design. Here it is necessary to take into account functionality, ergonomics, aesthetics, subordinating them to the general concept of the museum complex, considering the regularity of the location of objects, the movement of visitor flows, the zoning of space, taking into account the safety and preservation of cultural objects. The article highlights the design features of the museum space of the XX–XXI centuries, taking into account historical changes, political realities, stylistic trends and trends in art.

On the Bruun Rule suitability for modelling shoreline change

Modelling and understanding shoreline response to sea-level rise over decadal to centennial timescales is crucial for managing sandy coasts. Globally, the Bruun Rule is one of the most common shoreline model applied to facilitate this. However, there are several limitations to the Bruun Rule, which can compromise coastal management decisions. Here, we provide a novel assessment of the suitability of the Bruun Rule for application in sandy coasts by applying it to hindcast and project shoreline change in three morphologically different sandy beaches over yearly and decadal timescales. We also compare the Bruun Rule predictions against associated observations, published predictions from a hybrid shoreline model, and historical shoreline changes. Results show that the Bruun Rule fails to accurately hindcast and provide realistic projections of future shoreline change in sandy coasts. We attribute this to the Bruun Rule's assumption of linearity between shoreline retreat and relative sea-level rise and its inability to account for nearshore circulation. We, therefore, recommend limiting the use of the Bruun Rule for informing policy and the management of sandy coasts.

A temporal difference matrix for historical cumulative change detection in time series PolSAR data

To detect historical cumulative changes in land cover, this study introduces a novel time series PolSAR change detection method. The objective is to address the inefficiency of traditional detection methods that use multiple pairwise comparisons, as well as to alleviate false positives and false negatives caused by the insufficient utilization of polarization and spatial context information in previous methods. The proposed method initially constructs a temporal difference matrix for time series PolSAR images and computes the difference image (DI) using the maximum eigenvalue of this matrix to depict the cumulative changes over time. Subsequently, the DI is segmented using an MRF-based image segmentation method with a limited amount of supervised information, yielding the cumulative change binary map. The efficacy of the proposed method is validated using three time series datasets covering different scenes acquired by different sensors, namely GaoFen3, Radarsat2 and Sentinel-1. The experimental results demonstrate that the method effectively characterizes cumulative changes in the time series while simultaneously considering disparities in radar backscatter intensity and polarization correlation. As a result, it significantly reduces erroneous and missed change detections and surpasses the existing methods by achieving the highest Recall, F1-score, IOU, Kappa, and overall accuracy. Furthermore, the DI calculation method serves as a versatile change descriptor applicable not only for capturing cumulative changes in time series but also for describing changes between dual temporal images.

A critical history of child protection and welfare services for disabled children in the Republic of Ireland, 1960–2023

Existing research demonstrates at least threefold higher rates of maltreatment for disabled children than for their non-disabled peers. The situation is compounded by pervasive impediments to effective safeguarding practice for disabled children. While scholarly attention to this area is growing, one aspect remains thoroughly neglected in the Irish context, namely, historical accounts of disability and child protection are stark by their absence. This article presents key historical changes in child protection and welfare practice for disabled children from 1960 to 2023 in the Republic of Ireland. The account illustrates how discourses of risk aversion, rights and inclusion have collided with increased bureaucratisation and state regulation. Towards achieving a critical theoretical exposition of the history, conceptual conventions of the ‘5-P’ child protection model (prevention, paramountcy, partnership, protection and parental responsibility) are applied. Key lessons for policymakers and practitioners about the sociocultural construction of child protection and disability are then extracted and, with respect to informing future practice, critically explored.

Grace period of human mortality has declined for over a century.

Human mortality is U-shaped and, therefore, defines an age separating lives with an overall negative net change in mortality from lives with an overall positive net change in mortality. How has age changed, also relatively to life expectancy, over recent human history? And how does compare between humans and other primates, the mortality of which is also U-shaped? Modeling data from the Human Mortality Database, the historical change of in advanced economies is reported and compared with that of primates in wild and captive conditions the demography of which was already modeled in the literature. In humans, a marked decline in for both sexes, also relatively to their life expectancy, is associated with medical and economic progress. Comparing wild with captive conditions in nonhuman primates, magnitude, and direction of the change in , both relatively to life expectancy and absolutely, can depend on genus and sex. With medical and economic progress, human lives have transitioned from a negative to a positive net change in mortality independently of sex. There is no evidence of an analogous transition occurring in other primates when their environment is made more benign.

SYNCHRONOUS AND DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS OF COMPLEX SUFFIXAL FORMANTS AS A METHOD OF THEIR STUDY

Particular characteristics of suffixal complication, which has an articulated dynamic nature, require the application of synchronous and diachronic approaches to their study. Synchronous and diachronic study of complex formants implies the consideration of the previous historical changes when analysing synchronous states, as well as the study of dynamic processes in the word-formational, lexical and semantic subsystems of a language in determinate historical stages of its development. The method of synchronous and diachronic analysis of word-formation models with genetically complex word-formation affixes is presented by the example of the suffix -nits(a) with an object meaning. Synchronous and diachronic analysis of derived words with the suffix -nits(a), which implies the study of systemic relations between the nouns with the suffix -nits(a) in the Old Russian in the different stages of its development, reveals a genetic connection and a historical interaction of the modern Russian word-formation types with the suffixes -nits(a) and -n(ya), which are close semantically and include the derived words with the meaning of container and premises. The suffix -nits(a) with an object meaning is formed in the suffixal complication models “-n(ya) + -its(a)” in the nomina loci group. During its historical development, an extension of the semantic scope of application of the complex formant -nits(a) is observed, and its meaning transcends the boundaries of the names of premises group. The structural and functional evolvement of a new complex formant is empowered both by the peculiarities of nomina loci derivation and by the analogous influence of structurally and semantically close lexical units. The historical development of the suffix -nits(a) results in the following changes in its relations with the suffix -n(ya): the transition from the motivation relations to the relations of co-derivation, the increased productivity of the new complex formant, its prevalence in the competition with the genetically related suffix -n(ya).

Application of Fashion Element Trend Prediction Model Integrating AM and EfficientNet-b7 Models in Art Design

With the rapid development of the fashion industry and the increasing diversification of consumer needs, accurately predicting the fashion trends of clothing elements has become an urgent problem in the field of art design. In order to solve these problems, this paper uses deep learning technology for fashion trend prediction and optimization of prediction models. Firstly, the EfficientNet-b7 model is constructed as an attribute predictor to accurately extract the attributes of clothing image elements. Then, based on user information, popular elements are grouped and counted to solve the problem of different populations having different opinions on popular trends. The prediction model is constructed based on the bidirectional long short-term memory network encoder decoder framework, which trains trend information as a whole and utilizes element coexistence relationships to assist in trend prediction. Meanwhile, the study uses random sampling method for clothing original adoption, and the experimental results show that the model considering coexistence relationship performs the best in terms of mean absolute error and mean absolute percentage error, which are 0.0132 and 14.68%, respectively. In addition, the model that introduces attention mechanism based on trend similarity has improved by 5.09% and 4.54% on two indicators compared to the latest model. The experimental results indicate that coexistence relationships can help improve the performance of prediction models. The attention mechanism based on trend similarity can further improve model performance by similarity comparison between historical information and changing trend, and selecting similar historical information as an important influencing factor for future trends.

Predicting Soil Erosion Using RUSLE and GeoSOS-FLUS Models: A Case Study in Kunming, China

Revealing the relationship between land use changes and soil erosion provides a reference for formulating future land use strategies. This study simulated historical and future soil erosion changes based on the RULSE and GeoSOS-FLUS models and used a random forest model to explain the relative importance of natural and anthropogenic factors on soil erosion. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) From 1990 to 2020, significant changes in land use occurred in Kunming, with a continuous reduction in woodland, grassland, and cropland, being converted into construction land, which grew by 195.18% compared with 1990. (2) During this period, the soil erosion modulus decreased from 133.85 t/(km²·a) in 1990 to 130.32 t/(km²·a) in 2020, with a reduction in soil loss by 74,485.46 t/a, mainly due to the conversion of cropland to construction and ecological lands (woodland, grassland). (3) The expansion of construction land will continue, and it is expected that by 2050, the soil erosion modulus will decrease by 3.77 t/(km²·a), 4.27 t/(km²·a), and 3.27 t/(km²·a) under natural development, rapid development, and ecological protection scenarios, respectively. However, under the cropland protection scenario, the soil erosion modulus increased by 0.26 t/(km²·a) compared with 2020. (4) The spatial pattern of soil erosion is influenced by both natural and anthropogenic factors, and as human activities intensify in the future, the influence of anthropogenic factors will further increase. Traditionally, the expansion of construction land is thought to increase soil loss. Our study may offer a new perspective and provide a reference for future land use planning and soil loss management in Kunming.