Individual Land Parcels Research Articles

TINJAUAN YURIDIS PEMECAHAN TANAH LEBIH DARI LIMA BIDANG UNTUK HAK MILIK PERORANGAN

The emergence of a regulation of the Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning or the Head of the National Land Agency on the prohibition of land division of more than five parcels for individual property rights is a way to overcome the rampant housing or disguised lots that have sprung up so far. The regulation is stipulated in Regulation of the Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning or Regulation of the Head of the National Land Agency Number 16 of 2021 concerning the Third Amendment to Regulation of the Minister of Agrarian Affairs or Head of the National Land Agency Number 3 of 1997 concerning Provisions for the Implementation of Government Regulation Number 24 of 1997 concerning Land Registration. The purpose of this writing is to find out how the juridical review of land splitting of more than five parcels for individual property rights and what the legal consequences are for individuals who split more than five parcels of land. This research uses normative juridical approach with legislation. The result of this research is that the ownership of property rights to individual land or the division of individual land parcels is not allowed to exceed five parcels except if the base of the right comes from the transfer of inheritance rights or the base of the right with the building rights certificate. Apart from that, the division of more than five parcels must also be balanced with permits from the authorized agency, and usually with the base of the Building Rights Title, but in the current era there are still many Individual Property Rights whose ownership exceeds five parcels. However, with the emergence of the Regulation of the Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning or Regulation of the Head of the National Land Agency Number 16 of 2021, the regulation is more strictly applied in practice. Keywords: Land Division of More than Five Parcels, Agrarian.

Rehabilitation challenges for the onshore coal seam gas sector in Australia

The development of conventional oil and gas reserves followed by valorisation of coal seam gas (CSG) reserves in Queensland has seen the installation of over 16,000 wells. These wells are accompanied by thousands of kilometres of gathering lines, compression and water treatment facilities and transmission pipelines. The major rehabilitation challenges for the industry result less from technical challenges but rather from the sheer scale of the task. At present, the CSG industry continues to grow, and few of the CSG wells (other than exploration and appraisal wells) have yet reached the end of their life. The US experience presents a cautionary tale for adequate financial provisioning to mitigate the risks of orphaned wells. Secondly, the rehabilitation of multiple small parcels of land such as drill pads presents logistical challenges. Strategies to aggregate parcels for relinquishment will be required if the industry is to avoid thousands of individual land parcel evaluations at the time of relinquishment. These two rehabilitation challenges will be explored, risks for the industry and community assessed, and a call made for industry and government to work collaboratively to ensure an orderly and responsible rehabilitation program becomes an integral part of ongoing operations.

Re-Conceptualizing Vertical Subdivision Development for Sustainable, Affordable Housing Delivery

Research on sustainable, affordable housing is evolving. Yet, its conceptual efficacy in light of the changing needs of today’s cities and targeted low-to-middle-income households remains unknown. In today’s rapidly urbanizing world, understanding the conceptual relevance and importance of land use planning tools such as vertical subdivision to the delivery of sustainable housing is tenable. In response to this knowledge gap, this entry inquires, how can the delivery of affordable housing be configured in a manner that leverages the potential of a redefined vertical subdivision development to optimize densities and ensure that housing affordability is sustainable? Here, this entry re-defines vertical subdivision development as a housing planning and design tool that allows for the segregation of air spaces into individual volumetric land parcels that mimic the environmental features of the land-on-ground, such that housing construction within such volumetric spaces is a function of the contextually relevant needs of occupants. This entry demonstrates a paradigm shift from existing housing infrastructure planning models and narratives to one that responds to and addresses all three dimensions of sustainability: economic (sustainable affordability), environmental (sustainable densities), and social (occupant wellness) in the housing infrastructure planning and delivery process.

Multicriteria decisions and portfolio analysis: land acquisition for biological and social objectives.

Resource allocation for land acquisition is a common multiobjective problem that involves complex trade-offs. The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently uses the Targeted Resource Acquisition Comparison Tool (TRACT) to allocate funds from the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (MBCF; established through the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Act of 1934) for land acquisition based on cost-benefit analysis, regional priority rankings of candidate land parcels available for acquisition, and the overall biological contribution to duck population objectives. However, current policy encourages decision makers to consider societal and economic benefits of lands acquired, in addition to their biological benefits to waterfowl. These decisions about portfolio elements (i.e., individual land parcels) require an analysis of the difficult trade-offs among multiple objectives. In the last decade the application of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods has been instrumental in aiding decision makers with complex multiobjective decisions. In this study, we present an alternative approach to developing land-acquisition portfolios using MCDA and modern portfolio theory (MPT). We describe the development of a portfolio decision analysis tool using constrained optimization for land-acquisition decisions by the NWRS. We outline the decision framework, describe development of the prototype tool in Microsoft Excel, and test the results of the tool using land parcels submitted as candidates for MBCF funding in 2019. Our results indicate that the constrained optimization outperformed the traditional TRACT method and ad hoc portfolios developed using current NWRS criteria.

Fine-scale assessment of inequities in inland flood vulnerability

Every year, river floods disrupt millions of lives across the world, impacting individual livelihoods and testing the resilience of entire communities, with ripple effects through national economies. Not all households and communities are equally threatened by floods, but disparities in flood vulnerability within and between communities remain poorly quantified owing to coarse census data and inconsistency in official flood hazard maps. Here we address this gap by leveraging state-of-the-art flood hazard estimates and novel, fine-scale demographic information. We examine whether households experience unequal vulnerability to inland flooding based on their race and ethnicity in Washington State, U.S.A. Focusing on individual land parcels, we show that 9% of the population in the state lives in a flood zone, 16% of which are Latinx, even though Latinx residents make up only 8% of the overall population. Beyond disparities in exposure, we found that communities also differ in their vulnerability to floods. We demonstrate that using finer-grain data and improved flood hazard maps leads to starker estimates of total flood exposure and racial/ethnic inequities than using official data and conventional methods. Our results provide key information to advocate for and guide actions to mitigate racial and ethnic inequities in flood vulnerability.

THE IMPACT OF MEXICO’S LAND REFORM ON PERIURBAN HOUSING PRODUCTION: Neoliberal or Neocorporatist?

AbstractChanges to Mexico's Constitution in the 1990s marked the end of agrarian reform and the Revolutionary land regime which had allowed beneficiaries to work but not to sell their land. New legislation allowed individual parcels of ejido land to be converted into private property. Many observers link this ‘privatization’ with a transformation of the periurban landscape resulting from private developers’ construction of mass ‘social housing’ developments: a classic example of neoliberal urbanism. We examine evidence for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area, finding that, although some developments do occupy former ejido land, developers mostly prefer private property, including former haciendas. Private sector interests are wary of the ejido for reasons that stem from its place in the corporatist political system that characterized twentieth‐century Mexico, and the patchwork of privatized individual parcels clashes with developers’ land acquisition strategies. Ejidatarios often prefer to retain control over their land, selling plots piecemeal. Our findings demonstrate the continuing significance of urban informality—on a scale that exceeds the development of ejido land for formal housing—and the intertwining of formal and informal. We interpret these interrelated processes of housing production as legacies of corporatism, underlining the significance of political influences on Latin American neoliberalism.

A rapid analytics tool to map the effect of rezoning on property values

Cities are continually evolving through adjustments to zonings. The potential to integrate more equitable and effective value capture mechanisms into the rezoning process makes estimation of increases in land value from rezoning of interest to urban planners. The use of Residual Land Valuation (RLV), while accepted practice in development feasibility calculations, tends to be absent from the rezoning process because it is outside the skill set of most planners. Also, RLV has historically been applied to individual land parcels with limited potential for wider estimation of land value, and is generally not embedded in planning tools limiting the potential for value capture mechanisms to be included in the early scenario phases of rezoning decisions. This study addressed these issues. An RLV tool to estimate value uplift from rezoning was developed and embedded into a planning support system called Rapid Analytics Interactive Scenario Explorer (RAISE) to explore densification options associated with transport-oriented development. The co-design of the RLV tool with end-users and its test in a real case scenario in Greater Sydney has demonstrated the potential of RAISE-RLV. Specific advances included development of an algorithmic approach to RLV, that could be automated and applied across multiple parcels of land in rapid response to changing zoning. Second, such calculations were incorporated into a platform compatible with established rezoning decision making processes. The study demonstrated that it is possible to include RLV in a platform that improves users' understanding of the valuation process. The RAISE-RVL approach and tool can make a significant contribution to well-considered urbanisation. In addition, in the current era of tight government budgets, properly informed value capture mechanisms are a promising strategy for funding new infrastructure supporting both urban growth and the broader goals that growth can realise.

Evaluating profitability of soil-renovation investments under crop rotation constraints in Finland

Increasing the resource use efficiency of agricultural production is considered as a central element in Sustainable Intensification (SI) of agriculture, which is a promising strategy to satisfy increasing demand for food while reducing negative impacts on farm economy and environment. One challenge for SI is that degradation of agricultural soils and resulting crop yield losses are affecting negatively farmers' incomes and environment. This study analyses economic profitability of soil renovation investments aimed for tackling soil compaction in a regional context of south-west Finland, where some individual land parcels are compacted on many farms, implying crop yield losses, which we assume as −30%. We use a dynamic optimisation farm model with multiple input-use responses on crop yields. Explicit field parcel-specific crop-rotation constraints are accounted for in solving the farmers' decision problem of soil-renovation investments. Our results calculated over a 30 year time period suggest that soil-renovation investments are profitable since they produce a positive net present value (NPV) assuming 2000–2014 average crop prices, at all discount rates up to 10% when 30% yield decrease due to soil compaction is assumed. Higher than average crop prices would increase the value of soil renovation investment significantly while lower than average future crop prices would have a relatively small effect on the profitability of soil-renovation investment. The payback times of soil-renovation investments are approximately 8–11 years, depending on the discount rate, but largely independent on crop prices. Soil renovation increases production of higher valued crops, but the utilisation of the whole production potential of a farm is dependent on crop prices. We found that the full increased production potential may not be utilized after the renovation investment if not utilized already without the investment. It is concluded that one may recommend soil-renovation investments as a profitable long-term investment in a typical case, but one cannot recommend the soil renovation if no significant yield gains are possible, or if only low valued crop are to be produced. Nevertheless the field parcel-specific restrictions to avoid soil compaction after the renovation are important to be accounted for in evaluating the profitability of soil renovation at the farm level, since avoiding soil compaction is one part of more sustainable production strategy.

The Land Resource Circle: Supporting land-use decision making with an ecosystem-service-based framework of soil functions

Land information has in the past focused on the key land and soil properties that physically or chemically support or limit the use of land. With the increasing focus on the environmental, social, and cultural impacts of land-use decisions beyond the boundaries of individual land parcels, there is a growing need for more extensive land resource information to support assessments of the benefits, impacts, and trade-offs of land-use decisions. We present a new framework for providing land resource information to support an ecosystem-service-based approach to land-use related policy development. The new framework, called “the Land Resource Circle”, is first conceptually defined, then its use is explored in a hypothetical example. It draws upon the literature on soil functions and their contribution to ecosystem services. In addition, it recognizes that soils differ in their capacity for resisting the various pressures due to land use and/or climate. It also recognizes that the surrounding landscape provides functionality that can affect the delivery of ecosystem services from a land parcel and its suitability for different land uses. The Land Resource Circle is designed as a flexible and comprehensive information resource that can be used to build classifications underpinning spatial planning policy and regulation and land assessment, and to increase awareness of all the ecosystem services provided by land.

Fine-Grained Land Use Classification at the City Scale Using Ground-Level Images

Multimedia researchers have exploited large collections of community-contributed geo-referenced images to better understand a particular image, such as its subject matter or where it was taken, as well as to better understand a geographic location, such as the most visited tourist spots in a city or what the local cuisine is like. The goal of this paper is to better understand location. In particular, we use geo-referenced image collections to better understand what occurs in different parts of a city at fine spatial and activity class scales. This problem is known as land use mapping in the geographical sciences. We propose a novel framework to perform fine-grained land use mapping at the city scale using ground-level images. Mapping land use is considerably more difficult than mapping land cover and is generally not possible using overhead imagery as it requires close-up views and seeing inside buildings. We postulate that the growing collections of geo-referenced, ground-level images suggest an alternate approach to this geographic knowledge discovery problem. We develop a general framework that uses Flickr images to map 45 different land-use classes for the city of San Francisco, CA, USA. Individual images are classified using a novel convolutional neural network containing two streams: one for recognizing objects and another for recognizing scenes. This network is trained in an end-to-end manner directly on the labeled training images. We propose several novel strategies to overcome the noisiness of our user-generated data including search-based training set augmentation and online adaptive training. We derive a ground truth map of San Francisco in order to evaluate our method. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through geovisualization and quantitative analysis. Our framework achieves over 29% recall at the individual land parcel level that represents a strong baseline for the challenging 45-way land use classification problem, especially given the noisiness of the image data.

Doublethink and scale mismatch polarize policies for an invasive tree.

Mismatches between invasive species management policies and ecological knowledge can lead to profound societal consequences. For this reason, natural resource agencies have adopted the scientifically-based density-impact invasive species curve to guide invasive species management. We use the density-impact model to evaluate how well management policies for a native invader (Juniperus virginiana) match scientific guidelines. Juniperus virginiana invasion is causing a sub-continental regime shift from grasslands to woodlands in central North America, and its impacts span collapses in endemic diversity, heightened wildfire risk, and crashes in grazing land profitability. We (1) use land cover data to identify the stage of Juniperus virginiana invasion for three ecoregions within Nebraska, USA, (2) determine the range of invasion stages at individual land parcel extents within each ecoregion based on the density-impact model, and (3) determine policy alignment and mismatches relative to the density-impact model in order to assess their potential to meet sustainability targets and avoid societal impacts as Juniperus virginiana abundance increases. We found that nearly all policies evidenced doublethink and policy-ecology mismatches, for instance, promoting spread of Juniperus virginiana regardless of invasion stage while simultaneously managing it as a native invader in the same ecoregion. Like other invasive species, theory and literature for this native invader indicate that the consequences of invasion are unlikely to be prevented if policies fail to prioritize management at incipient invasion stages. Theory suggests a more realistic approach would be to align policy with the stage of invasion at local and ecoregion management scales. There is a need for scientists, policy makers, and ecosystem managers to move past ideologies governing native versus non-native invader classification and toward a framework that accounts for the uniqueness of native species invasions, their anthropogenic drivers, and their impacts on ecosystem services.

Extracting Farmland Features from Lidar-Derived DEM for Improving Flood Plain Delineation

Flood plains, which are commonly distributed in flat river or lake basins, often contain large tracts of farmland. Therefore, flood plains require precise and detailed information on the role played by farmland in flood routing simulations, flood risk evaluation, and flood loss evaluation. In farmland, cultivated land parcels are not directly adjacent. The intervening non-cultivable land, which might include trails and ditches, can cover large areas. Currently, the area of non-cultivable land between cultivated land parcels is usually measured by artificial visual interpretation or by fieldwork. This study focused on the extraction of uncultivable trails, ditches, and cultivated field parcels within farmland on the basis of a Light Detection and Ranging-derived (LiDAR-derived) high-resolution gridded Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The proposed approach was applied to generate polygons of individual land parcels in a flood storage and detention area. The DEM was first smoothed and then subtracted. To remove small spots and to smooth the boundaries of the land parcels, inner and outer buffers were created to generalize the extracted polygons. Experiments proved that this approach is applicable in flood plain farmland and demonstrated that the chosen parameters were appropriate. This approach is more efficient than traditional surveying methods. For field parcel extraction, the accuracy achieved was 93.42%, using official statistics for comparison, and the Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.90, using a visual interpretation of an aerial image for comparison. The kappa coefficients were 0.87 and 0.77 for trail and ditch extraction, respectively.

GIS based optimal impervious surface map generation using various spatial data for urban nonpoint source management

Impervious surfaces are mainly artificial structures such as rooftops, roads, and parking lots that are covered by impenetrable materials. These surfaces are becoming the major causes of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution in urban areas. The rapid progress of urban development is increasing the total amount of impervious surfaces and NPS pollution. Therefore, many cities worldwide have adopted a stormwater utility fee (SUF) that generates funds needed to manage NPS pollution. The amount of SUF is estimated based on the impervious ratio, which is calculated by dividing the total impervious surface area by the net area of an individual land parcel. Hence, in order to identify the exact impervious ratio, large-scale impervious surface maps (ISMs) are necessary. This study proposes and assesses various methods for generating large-scale ISMs for urban areas by using existing GIS data. Bupyeong-gu, a district in the city of Incheon, South Korea, was selected as the study area. Spatial data that were freely offered by national/local governments in S. Korea were collected. First, three types of ISMs were generated by using the land-cover map, digital topographic map, and orthophotographs, to validate three methods that had been proposed conceptually by Korea Environment Corporation. Then, to generate an ISM of higher accuracy, an integration method using all data was proposed. Error matrices were made and Kappa statistics were calculated to evaluate the accuracy. Overlay analyses were performed to examine the distribution of misclassified areas. From the results, the integration method delivered the highest accuracy (Kappa statistic of 0.99) compared to the three methods that use a single type of spatial data. However, a longer production time and higher cost were limiting factors. Among the three methods using a single type of data, the land-cover map showed the highest accuracy with a Kappa statistic of 0.91. Thus, it was judged that the mapping method using the land-cover map is more appropriate than the others. In conclusion, it is desirable to apply the integration method when generating the ISM with the highest accuracy. However, if time and cost are constrained, it would be effective to primarily use the land-cover map.

Trends of land system in Ukraine

The organization of land use in different countries is characterized by a variety of land system types, those proved their effectiveness in certain countries, but not are necessarily as effective in others. The objective factors that led to the emergence of various models of the land system, include socio-economic, historical, ethnic, cultural, natural and other features of different countries and peoples that inhabit them. During 1991-2016 years,Ukraineestablished basics of a new land order and the respective land relations and the system of market-oriented land use, especially in agriculture. It is characterized by: a new legal and regulatory framework, different types of ownership of land and other natural resources, a multi-structure and paid land use, providing public with land parcels, initiated the establishment of a market-oriented system of state land cadastre, including registration of land parcels and rights to them. So, modern land transformations in Ukraine, which laid the basics of a new land order, requires the development of new approaches to land use management at different hierarchical levels of general land planning throughout the country. It caused by many reasons. Primarily: setting the state boundaries and bounds of administrative units; development of different types of land ownership; increased numbers of new landowning and land tenure of citizens, enterprises, institutions and associations up to more than 23 million; need for separation of state and municipal property for land; establishment of payment for land use; specification of legal and functional status of land and of various restrictions, encumbrances and easements to each individual land parcel. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of work on land-use planning at different hierarchical levels and general land management in modern conditions. Particularly acute need of land planning in urban and agricultural land use sectors of the country. Thus, the strategic development of land reforms and bringing them to a new level - the volume and long-term task that requires scientific substantiation of a rational state land policy. The study justified that the land order - a land system, i.e. a set of measures for the territorial organization of land and other natural resources of the country, land relations, that is determined by system of ownership and use of land, as well as by the principles of organization of territory. In the process of land reform the land system have been changed several times: from the system of administrative-territorial division and respective to it forms of land use and methods of land use (collective and state farms) as of year 1990, to the system of the administrative-territorial division with the respective forms of land ownership (state, collective, private) and the forms and methods of land use (collective and state farms, collective farms, peasant (farmer) farms, subsidiary farms, collective gardens, agricultural research institutions, subsidiary agriculture enterprices, etc.) as of 1991 - 2001. As of the 2002 - 2016 , the land order in Ukraine was defined: by the natural-resource-based division and natural-economic-based division (zoning); by the administrative-territorial division; by the forms of land ownership (state, municipal, property of foreign countries, co-ownership, private ownership of individuals and of legal entities); by the forms and methods of land use (for example, in agriculture there were the non-state agricultural enterprises such as collective, cooperative, corporate (agricultural holdings), companies, private-rental farms, subsidiary farms, private (family and individual), state and municipal scientific research and others). Today, due to the decentralization of power, the new model for land order is developed, which will be presented in subsequent studies. Keywords . Land system, administrative-territorial structure, forms of land ownership, land use

Harbour-side land parcel land-use changes: significance in re-development planning permit appraisal in Melbourne, Australia

Results are presented of spatial query at the land parcel level of a (digital) spatial database, referring to the twentieth century Harbour-side zone of the Port of Melbourne. They refer mainly to land-use histories of individual land parcels. Such histories can be now deployed routinely in decision support during assessment of heritage potential in aid of re-development/excavation permit appraisal.Such query has long been possible in a general way: the innovation brought forward in this presentation refers to the new level of detail that is achieved by adopting digital spatial database query. The prerequisite for such query is the kind of digital spatial database that we have built from imposing spatial compatibility on archival maps and air photos.It is argued that much interest will attach to implementing the spatial database building process exemplified in this paper for decision-making in planning permit appraisal. For instance, contaminated ground might be better identified. Modern data handling tools make this feasible in a routine way if the necessary data and information flow paths and data sharing can be arranged.

Shale gas in Poland: An analysis of tax mechanismsand dynamic interactions

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionTo date, not a single cubic meter of shale gas has been extracted and sold in Europe. While the substance still sits deep in the ground, it has already fuelled a fierce debate, protests, hopes and fears across the continent. Poland is the forerunner of exploration of natural gas from unconventional (shale rock) deposits. Nevertheless, little economic research has been conducted on the topic of shale gas in Poland. This exploratory study hopes to contribute to the scholarship on the topic.The aim of this article is to approach the study of shale gas from an economic perspective, with welfare at the centre of the analysis, and to deliver policy recommendations for the Polish government on the taxation of the shale gas extracting firms in Poland.The key result of the static analysis is that is that lump sum tax is the first best of all taxation methods. The second best option for taxation is a combination of the CIT and a windfall profit tax. From the dynamic perspective, this research argues that Gazprom can remain the market leader thanks to the sequential character of the competition in the Polish natural gas market, but this would not have negative welfare effects.This study is structured in the following way: section two introduces the topic of shale gas in Poland, section three elaborates on the methods, section four provides an analysis of the tax mechanisms from a static perspective, section five looks at the dynamic effects and sections six concludes the research.1.Shale gas in PolandThe Polish government initially offered the licenses to explore, or explore and extract, shale gas in the form of concessions. The second license type, to explore and extract, was introduced in order to simplify the market regulation and to attract investors. For a low price firms could purchase the right to explore and extract, regardless of the findings. Concessions are individual parcels of land. The price of each concession is determined by its size multiplied by a single rate that the Polish government sets per square kilometre (km2). A single rate applies to all concessions in the country. For exploration only, the price per km2 had been set at PLN 105.811 and for exploration and extraction PLN 211.622. In addition, the firm that bought the license only for the exploration process had the pre-emptive right to upgrade the license to extraction of shale gas. There were two reason behind this design. First was lack of knowledge about the quantity and quality of natural gas in the Polish shale rock formations. Second, the investors, not the taxpayers, bore the cost of exploration and the associated risk. Shifting the costs and risk associated with exploration process on investors was compensated by the government to the firms in the form of the pre-emptive right to purchase a license for extraction and the single exploration/extraction licenses. A new law, introduced in 2014, has combined previous types of concession into one, in a further effort to simplify access to the market. In all cases the legal set- up has ruled out auctions at the extraction stage. For this reason the Polish government has turned to taxation as a method to collect revenue from the potential shale gas extraction and sales. In the Polish government's view the 19 per cent profit tax is insufficient. Warsaw decided, in the 2014 change of law, to raise the potential revenue from taxation of shale gas firms by adding a complementary tax on fossil fuels, that depends on the profitability of the source, and can amount to 0, 12,5 or 25 per cent and also an additional tax of 1,5 per cent on the total value of extracted natural gas from shale sources. Nevertheless, collection of the complementary tax has been suspended until year 2020, in an attempt to stimulate the industry. Possibly, taxation of shale gas will be adjusted once again in the future. Without certainty about tax regulation and the size of the tax burden, investors are reluctant to invest in exploration or move from exploration to extraction; what harms consumers of natural gas in Poland. …

Groundwater Monitoring to Support Development of BMPs for Groundwater Protection: The Abbotsford‐Sumas Aquifer Case Study

AbstractThe Abbotsford‐Sumas Aquifer is arguably the most studied case in Canada of groundwater nitrate contamination associated with agricultural production. Underlying some of the most productive agricultural land in Canada, this highly vulnerable trans‐boundary aquifer provides a unique case study on the opportunities and challenges of addressing water quality issues. A groundwater monitoring program initiated in the early 1990s has been important in tracking spatial and temporal variation in groundwater nitrate concentration. However, small land parcels with spatially and temporally variable land use and management practices and sub‐horizontal flow in this highly permeable sand and gravel aquifer make it difficult to relate groundwater monitoring results to specific agricultural practices. Other approaches pointed to the historical over‐application of N relative to crop requirement (primarily as manure used to increase soil organic matter during replanting but also as a nutrient source during production). Despite changes in agricultural practices, and programs aimed at raising grower awareness, no appreciable change in average groundwater nitrate concentration has occurred over the monitoring period. On individual land parcels, nitrate contamination may be reduced through development and adoption of an integrated suite of beneficial management practices (BMPs) to improve N fertilization, irrigation and alley vegetation management, and in particular to eliminate application of any organic soil amendment such as untreated manure in which the N has not been stabilized (e.g., by composting). However, the substantial N imbalance on a regional scale, and the lack of an effective on‐going consultative process among stakeholders, remain major barriers to the development, demonstration and adoption of BMPs.

Beyond fragmentation at the fringe: A path-dependent, high-resolution analysis of urban land cover in Phoenix, Arizona

A common critique of urban sprawl is that it leads to increased land fragmentation, which has negative social and ecological implications. Consistent with theory, empirical research generally finds increased levels of fragmentation near the urban fringe. We apply landscape metrics to 1-m resolution remotely sensed imagery of the City of Phoenix, Arizona from 2010 in order to analyze urban sprawl based on the area, fragmentation, shape complexity, and diversity of land covers at a resolution finer than that of an individual land parcel. While previous work typically defines areas by how far they are from the central city, we identify census block groups in Phoenix based on the decade during which they became developed in order to observe landscape variation based on the age of a neighborhood area. Results confirm substantial variation in present-day land cover patterns based on the timing of development: landscape structure in Phoenix is heavily path-dependent. While land covers in newer-developing regions generally appear more fragmented, more homogeneous, and less diverse, the complexity of shapes and incidence of desert landscaping appear to be higher as well. Areas that developed principally during the 1990s and 2000s appear noticeably different than their older counterparts across many measures used. We speculate that institutional changes and evolving preferences for various development types explain much of this present-day variation.

Eco-social determinants of Schistosoma japonicum infection supported by multi-level modelling in Eryuan county, People's Republic of China

Schistosomiasis remains of considerable public health concern in many tropical and subtropical regions of the world, including the People's Republic of China (P.R. China). The effectiveness of schistosomiasis control interventions are, among other factors, governed by the social-ecological context. However, eco-social determinants of schistosomiasis are poorly understood, particularly at the household or village levels. In the current study, residents in 26 villages of Eryuan county, Yunnan province, P.R. China, were screened for Schistosoma japonicum infection with a serological assay that was followed by stool examination for sero-positive individuals. Bayesian multilevel models with spatial random effects were employed to profile the S. japonicum infection risk based on known transmission sites of S. japonicum that are scattered across individual land parcels in this part of the country. The key risk factors identified with this approach were the absence of a sanitary stall house for livestock and presence of living and infected intermediate host snails in close proximity. We conclude that a spatially explicit Bayesian multilevel approach can deepen our understanding of eco-social determinants that govern schistosomiasis transmission at a small geographical scale.

A spatio-temporal view of historical growth in Phoenix, Arizona, USA

This study uses a spatio-temporal approach to analyze the historical development of Phoenix, Arizona. While historical narratives provide rich detail, there is also a strong quantitative tradition in urban growth research. Methods from urban growth models, ecological modeling, and spatial analysis provide sharper intuition into the effect that urban change processes have on the growth trajectory of individual land parcels and the entire urban landscape. Phoenix, Arizona is a popular case study for urban growth because of its rapid, decentralized expansion and the hegemony of its suburbs and outlying areas. It is often seen as the epitome of post-World War II suburban sprawl. We digitize parcel maps of downtown Phoenix from 1915, 1949, and 1963 in order to investigate the impact of regional change processes on the city's historic core. Using transition matrices, join-count autocorrelation, and spatial Markov chains, we find that the purported emptying out of the downtown area following World War II was more complex than the common story of retail exodus. Despite an increase in so-called nuisance properties and poor institutional land use controls, nuisance parcels showed a propensity toward aggregation and were less likely to exist in close proximity to higher order uses. Finally, we find that Phoenix's downtown is continually homogenizing by land use type. This paper provides a parcel-level view of the impacts that drivers of change have on urban landscapes, demonstrating the usefulness of spatio-temporal approaches in understanding the development of an urban morphology during a critical period of urban change worldwide.