Changes In Land-use Intensity Research Articles

Spatial and temporal variations in land use and land cover in the Njoro and Kamweti River catchments, Kenya

The Njoro and Kamweti River catchments are productive catchments that have and continue to experience major land-use changes with consequences on land cover and the associated environmental resources. It is, therefore, crucial to understand the type of changes occurring, spatial patterns, and the rates at which these changes are occurring. In this study, we quantified the changes in land use and land cover that occurred between 1988 and 2019 identifying areas of change and the average annual rate of change. Thematic Mappers (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mappers Plus (ETM +) and Sentinel images were obtained for 1988 and 2019. Ground truthing was carried out to enable us to verify the accuracy of the remotely sensed data using in-situ observations to refine the classification output. The results obtained indicated that both catchments have experienced intense land-use changes but at different levels. Njoro River catchment’s forest cover and shrubland had decreased at a rate of 6.06 Km2/year and 0.92 Km2/year respectively and the most increase was recorded in farmlands (3.11 Km2/year) as the other land use classes also increased. In the Kamweti River catchment, forest cover showed a decrease at a rate of 0.21 Km2/year, and farmlands also a slight decrease of 0.1 Km2/year while the other land cover classes increased in area coverage during the period 1988-2019. The changes in land use and land cover were attributed to increased demand for food and housing and thus continued degrading the two catchments especially the Njoro River catchment. Results obtained indicated that anthropogenic activities were the major contributing factors to the changes in Land Use Land Cover experienced in both catchments. We recommend continued analysis of the trends and rates of land cover conversions owing to their potential use by development planners.

Assessing Habitat Vulnerability and Loss of Naturalness: Applying the GLOBIO3 Model in the Czech Republic

Global and regional biodiversity loss is caused by several drivers including urban development, land use intensification, overexploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution, and climate change. The main aim of our study was to adapt the GLOBIO3 model to the conditions of the Czech Republic (CR) to assess loss of naturalness and biodiversity vulnerability at the habitat level on a detailed scale across the entire CR. An additional aim was to assess the main drivers affecting the biodiversity of habitat types. The GLOBIO3 model was adapted to CZ-GLOBIO by adapting global to local scales and using habitat quality and naturalness data instead of species occurrence data. The total mean species abundance (MSA) index of habitat quality, calculated from the spatial overlay of the four MSA indicators by our new equation, reached the value 0.62. The total value of MSA for natural and near-natural habitats was found to be affected mainly by infrastructure development and fragmentation. Simultaneously, intensity of land use change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition contributed primarily to the low total value of MSA for distant natural habitats. The CZ-GLOBIO model can be an important tool in political decision making to reduce the impact of the main drivers on habitat biodiversity in the CR.

Low forest-loss thresholds threaten Amazonian fish and macroinvertebrate assemblage integrity

Deforestation is a major threat globally, but especially in tropical regions because they are biodiversity strongholds and carbon storehouses. Some studies have reported changes in species richness and composition in lotic ecosystems with increased forest-loss in their catchment, presumably resulting from the replacement of sensitive taxa by more resistant or tolerant taxa. Also, sensitive taxa respond to deforestation in a non-linear manner and fish and macroinvertebrates have different sensitivities to landscape pressures. Therefore, it is useful to determine the effects of forest-loss on widespread sensitive or threshold taxa in aquatic ecosystems. We used Threshold Indicator Taxa Analysis (TITAN) to assess forest-loss and land use history impacts in 92 eastern Amazonian stream sites. We determined TITAN peak-change thresholds for fish at 1% and 6% of forest-loss at total-catchment and local-riparian spatial extents, respectively, and at 2% and 40% of land-use intensity change at total-catchment and local-riparian spatial extents, respectively. For macroinvertebrates, TITAN peak-change thresholds were 1% and 11% of forest loss at total-catchment and local-riparian spatial extents, respectively, and at 3% of land-use intensity change for both total-catchment and local-riparian spatial extents. Because of these thresholds, inherent ecoregional variability and key literature, we have three major recommendations. 1) Logging should be prohibited in riparian reserves that are at least 100-m wide on each side of headwater streams and in a network of catchments across all biomes and as many landscape types as possible. 2) An ecologically and statistically rigorous monitoring program with standard methods should be implemented to assess and regulate land uses better. 3) Conservation planning areas should consider aquatic biota as well as terrestrial biota.

Riparian forests buffer the negative effects of cropland on macroinvertebrate diversity in lowland Amazonian streams

Riparian forests regulate stream ecosystems and biodiversity. Therefore, changes to riparian structure may threaten stream ecosystem function by triggering taxonomic and functional changes to aquatic communities. Because macroinvertebrate assemblages are sensitive to environmental changes, they can be effective indicators of stream integrity in disturbed landscapes. To assess the role of riparian forests in maintaining tropical stream communities in areas experiencing large-scale watershed disturbance, we quantified the taxonomic and functional response of stream macroinvertebrate communities to forest clearing in the southeastern Amazon’s agricultural frontier, a region experiencing widespread deforestation. Our results show that watershed deforestation can lead to significant changes in macroinvertebrate richness and community composition. We found a predominance of shredders in forested watersheds; scrapers in cropland watersheds with riparian forests; and collector-filterers in cropland watersheds without riparian forest buffers. Taxonomic composition was controlled by available organic material in forested watersheds and by periphyton in cropland sites regardless of whether they had a riparian buffer. Our results show that the clearing of riparian forests alters food sources supporting aquatic food webs, leading to ecosystem-level shifts through changes in light and temperature dynamics that affect aquatic communities in areas with intense land-use change such as the southeastern Amazon.

Response of local temperature variation to land cover and land use intensity changes in China over the last 30 years

In addition to land cover change (LCC), land use intensity change (LUIC) is another dominant pathway through which anthropogenic activities influence regional climate. Although the climatic effects of LCC have been investigated extensively, little is currently known about the effects of LUIC. In this study, we assess land use and cover change in China over the last three decades in terms of LCC and LUIC and investigate their climatic effects using the observation minus reanalysis method. Results indicate that nearly half of the stations have experienced LUIC, and the climatic response of these stations exhibit different or even opposite signals compared to those that have experienced LCC. With regard to LCC, it is found that urbanized stations generally exert a warming effect on local temperatures, whereas cropland expansion is likely to introduce a cooling effect. In the case of LUIC, the present study demonstrates that the intensification of grassland tends to lead to warming because of the decreased albedo. However, a cooling effect from the enhanced evapotranspiration (ET) dominates local temperature variations in intensified cropland stations. The absence of correlations between albedo/ET and land management changes in urban stations illustrates the inherent complexity of local climate change. The findings of the present study provide a deeper understanding of land–atmospheric interactions and could guide future land-use planning and management to achieve potential climatic benefits.

Socio-ecological drivers of long-term ecosystem carbon stock trend: An assessment with the LUCCA model of the French case

• Land-use change are driven by socio-ecological processes affecting carbon fluxes. • We assess these drivers and fluxes based on a long-term modelling approach. • Carbon stocks in ecosystem increased by 32 % of in France from 1850 to 2015. • The main drivers are first change in land use intensity and second land conversion. • However, carbon emissions by fossil fuel are 9 times the sink in ecosystems. Land ecosystems can play a crucial role in climate-change mitigation by acting as sinks for carbon. Legacy effects of past land use, including land conversion and changes in land-use intensity, influence the capacity for future ecosystem carbon sequestration. These effects are hard to quantify, however, and the influence of changes in land-use intensity are still largely overlooked. This study assessed the long term dynamics (1850–2015) of the terrestrial carbon budget in France. We developed a new dynamic model: LUCCA (Land Use Change & Conversion Accounting) that robustly quantifies the dynamics of carbon stocks and fluxes. It allows disentanglement of land conversion from land management effects following a socio-ecological perspective. Carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems in France increased from 3.5 GtC in 1850 to 4.8 GtC in 2015 as a result of contrasting regional land-use trajectories. Based on five counterfactual scenarios, we unravel that changes in land-use intensity explained 46 % of the observed carbon stock changes since 1850, while land conversion was responsible for 30 %, and the rest can be attributed to changes in forest growth rates induced by both environmental and management changes. The effects of land conversion and changes in land-use intensity on carbon stock accumulation, however, would have been hardly possible in the absence of agricultural intensification and release of harvest pressure following wood-fuel substitution by fossil fuel. In fact, carbon emissions induced by fossil fuel consumption in France from 1850 to 2015 were 9 times the carbon sink in terrestrial ecosystems. These figures highlight the importance of considering long-term trajectories of ecosystem carbon fluxes and their relationship with emissions from other processes for climate action strategies.

Land-use intensity alters networks between biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services

Land-use intensification can increase provisioning ecosystem services, such as food and timber production, but it also drives changes in ecosystem functioning and biodiversity loss, which may ultimately compromise human wellbeing. To understand how changes in land-use intensity affect the relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services, we built networks from correlations between the species richness of 16 trophic groups, 10 ecosystem functions, and 15 ecosystem services. We evaluated how the properties of these networks varied across land-use intensity gradients for 150 forests and 150 grasslands. Land-use intensity significantly affected network structure in both habitats. Changes in connectance were larger in forests, while changes in modularity and evenness were more evident in grasslands. Our results show that increasing land-use intensity leads to more homogeneous networks with less integration within modules in both habitats, driven by the belowground compartment in grasslands, while forest responses to land management were more complex. Land-use intensity strongly altered hub identity and module composition in both habitats, showing that the positive correlations of provisioning services with biodiversity and ecosystem functions found at low land-use intensity levels, decline at higher intensity levels. Our approach provides a comprehensive view of the relationships between multiple components of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services and how they respond to land use. This can be used to identify overall changes in the ecosystem, to derive mechanistic hypotheses, and it can be readily applied to further global change drivers.

The MARAS dataset, vegetation and soil characteristics of dryland rangelands across Patagonia

We present the MARAS (Environmental Monitoring of Arid and Semiarid Regions) dataset, which stores vegetation and soil data of 426 rangeland monitoring plots installed throughout Patagonia, a 624.500 km2 area of southern Argentina and Chile. Data for each monitoring plot includes basic climatic and landscape features, photographs, 500 point intercepts for vegetation cover, plant species list and biodiversity indexes, 50-m line-intercept transect for vegetation spatial pattern analysis, land function indexes drawn from 11 measures of soil surface characteristics and laboratory soil analysis (pH, conductivity, organic matter, N and texture). Monitoring plots were installed between 2007 and 2019, and are being reassessed at 5-year intervals (247 have been surveyed twice). The MARAS dataset provides a baseline from which to evaluate the impacts of climate change and changes in land use intensity in Patagonian ecosystems, which collectively constitute one of the world´s largest rangeland areas. This dataset will be of interest to scientists exploring key ecological questions such as biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships, plant-soil interactions and climatic controls on ecosystem structure and functioning.

Evaluation of soil enzyme activities as soil biological activity indicators in desert-oasis transition zone soils in China

The seasonal and spatial variations (desert, desert-oasis, and oasis) in some enzyme activities (urease, alkaline phosphatase, nitrate reductase, dehydrogenase, and catalase) in the 0–20 cm and 20–40 cm soil layers were evaluated along a typical desert-oasis transition zone in the Shule River basin in China. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation of soil urease, alkaline phosphatase, dehydrogenase, and catalase activities with vegetation coverage and available phosphorus while they had a negative correlation with soil pH and EC. Nitrate reductase activity was positively correlated with soil pH and EC but was negatively correlated with elevation and vegetation coverage. According to the redundancy analysis, environmental factors (elevation, vegetation coverage, soil moisture contents, pH, EC, OM, AP and AK) in this study explained 89.8% of the soil enzymatic activity variations when combined (p < 0.01). The Monte Carlo simulation showed that the order of importance of environmental factors on soil enzyme activities was as follows: vegetation coverage (42.5%) > elevation (38.0%) > EC (30.7%) > AP (18.1%) > pH (15.4%). Accordingly, catalase activity exhibited sensitivity to changes in land use intensity and no seasonal variation, suggesting that it is the soil biological activity indicator best suited for measuring existing conditions and potential changes in the desert-oasis transition zone soils.

Assessing spatial and temporal biases and gaps in the publicly available distributional information of Iberian mosses.

One of the most valuable initiatives on massive availability of biodiversity data is the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which is creating new opportunities to develop and test macroecological knowledge. However, the potential uses of these data are limited by the gaps and biases associated to large-scale distributional databases (the so-called Wallacean shortfall). Describing and quantifying these limitations are essential to improve knowledge on biodiversity, especially in poorly-studied groups, such as mosses. Here we assess the coverage of the publicly-available distributional information on Iberian mosses, defining its eventual biases and gaps. For this purpose, we compiled IberBryo v1.0, a database that comprises 82,582 records after processing and checking the geospatial and taxonomical information. Our results show the limitations of data and metadata of the publicly-available information. Particularly, ca. 42% of the records lacked collecting date information, which limits data usefulness for time coverage analyses and enlarges the existing knowledge gaps. Then we evaluated the overall coverage of several aspects of the spatial, temporal and environmental variability of the Iberian Peninsula. Through this assessment, we demonstrate that the publicly-available information on Iberian mosses presents significant biases. Inventory completeness is strongly conditioned by the recorders' survey bias, particularly in northern Portugal and eastern Spain and the spatial pattern of surveys is also biased towards mountains. Besides, the temporal pattern of survey effort intensifies from 1970 onwards, encompassing a progressive increase in the geographic coverage of the Iberian Peninsula. Although we just found 5% of well-surveyed cells of 30’ of resolution over the 1970-2018 period, they cover about a fifth of the main climatic gradients of the Iberian Peninsula, which provides a fair – though limited – coverage. Yet, the well-surveyed cells are biased towards anthropised areas and some of them are located in areas under intense land-use changes, mainly due to the wood-fires of the last decade. Despite the overall increase, we found a noticeable gap of information in the south-west of Iberia, the Ebro river basin and the inner plateaus. All these gaps and biases call for a careful use of the available distributional data of Iberian mosses for biogeographical and ecological modelling analysis. Further, our results highlight the necessity of incorporating several good practices to increase the coverage of high-quality information. These good practices include digitalisation of specimens and metadata information, improvement on the protocols to get accurate data and metadata or revisions of the vouchers and recorders' field notebooks. These procedures are essential to improve the quality and coverage of the data. Finally, we also encourage Iberian bryologists to establish a series of re-surveys of classical localities that would allow updating the information on the group, as well as to design their future surveys considering the most important information gaps on IberBryo.

Spatial genetic structure of a keystone long-lived semiarid shrub: historical effects prevail but do not cancel the impact of recent severe habitat loss on genetic diversity

Land-use conversion and habitat loss and degradation are among the factors affecting populations and species genetic integrity. Understanding how these factors govern the genetic structure of threatened plant populations is essential to design efficient conservation strategies. Here we analyze how environmental correlates, geographic location and anthropogenic disturbance (at local, landscape and regional scales) relate to population differentiation and genetic diversity of a keystone semiarid long-lived shrub, Ziziphus lotus. The European range of this species is restricted mainly to the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (> 90%) but its area has shrunk considerably as a consequence of intensive agriculture and urban expansion since the 1950s. We characterize its genetic diversity and structure across the Iberian Peninsula with microsatellite markers, considering 21 populations. All populations showed high and relatively similar values of genetic diversity (mean/pop: Ho = 0.54; He = 0.55; AR = 3.59). Three main genetic clusters were defined by clustering analyses corresponding largely to west, central (core) and east of its distribution. Molecular variance analysis revealed that 87.3% of genetic variation was grouped within populations, 5% among populations and 7% between regions. Geographic location (37.88%) has stronger correlation with population genetic differences than landscape characteristics (5.82%). Natural habitat cover at the landscape level was the only environmental variable associated with FST population differences. The detected population genetic patterns are probably related primarily to historical gene flow and secondarily to intensive land-use change of this area in the last 60 years. Our results suggest that, although the long-lived and resprouting strategy of the species is buffering the erosion of genetic diversity at population and regional level, there are already genetic consequences of landscape degradation, which could be aggravated in the future.

Linking land-use change, landscape patterns, and ecosystem services in a coastal watershed of southeastern China

Intensive human activity has led to dramatic land changes in coastal watersheds, which in turn cause landscape pattern changes and threaten the valuable but fragile ecosystem. This paper conducted an empirical study in Jiulong River watershed (JRW) - a coastal watershed of southeast China with a population of more than 5 million and a land area of approximately 14,700 km2, to understand the effects of land-use change on landscape pattern and ecosystem services. We characterizes and compares land-use change with the approach of Intensity Analysis, the landscape change with landscape metrics, and ecosystem services values (ESVs) change in monetary terms, between the estuary and non-estuary zones of JRW, from 1990 to 2015. The results show that the overall land-use change in the estuary zone is continuously increasing while it went down after 2000 in the non-estuary zone. The land-use change intensity is positively associated with overall landscape fragmentation and heterogeneity in the estuary zone. The built-up area has become more aggregated, while grassland, cropland and woodland have become less aggregated, which is negatively associated with the ESVs in both zones. Furthermore, the land-use change intensity was found to strongly correlate with the degradation of ESVs.

Analysis of Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in YongDeng County Using Remote Sensing and GIS

The research is supported by the fundamental Research Funds of Gansu Provincial Natural Science Fund of “Research on Land Use and Ecological Security in Ecologically Vulnerable Areas” (Project No. GSAN-ZL-2015-045) and Research on the Coordination Relationship between Land Urbanization and Population Urbanization (Project No. GSAU-ZL-2015-046). Abstract To generate reliable data on the spatiotemporal changes in land use and land cover in YongDeng county over a period of 24 years (1993 -2017) that will provide a basis for land use management decisions and policy formulation, this study used RS and GIS to analyze Landsat images of 1993, 2001, 2009 and 2017 of the study area which were acquired from the Geospatial Data Cloud ( Http/westdc.westgis.ac.cn ). Using supervised classification based on maximum likelihood classification method in ArcGIS (version 10.3) to classify images of the various years, the computed land use and land cover classes indicate that over the period of 24 years, significant Land use and land cover changes have occurred in the study area and the dominant land-use types in the study area were found to be grassland, bare land woodland and cultivated land occupying 65 percent, 20 percent, 8 percent and 6 percent of the study area respectively. As the years pass by, urban sprawl, population growth, agricultural activities, and other socio-economic activities in the study area, have led to rapid land-use transfer and change intensity. The results revealed that about 4.5 km² of grassland, 3.21 km² of bare land, 2.51 km² of cultivated lands and 1.7 km² of woodland were changed to construction lands from 1993-2017, whiles Cultivated lands, on the other hand, made gains of 2.56 km² from Garden lands, 2.3 km² from bare land and 1.05 km² from woodland from 1993 to 2017. Whiles transport land, from 1993 to 2017 gained 3.3 km² from bare land, 2.42 km² from grassland, and 1.32 km² from cultivated. Cultivated land, transportation land, construction land and water area and conservation land showed significantly positive land-use change intensity index of 2.19%, 1.97%, 1.49% and 1.31% respectively. Garden Land and woodland, though not significant also showed positive land-use change intensity of 0.55% and 0.79% respectively. The study identified population growth, urbanization and policy orientation as the main drivers of land use/land cover change in the area. The results reveal there is an urgent need to put measures in place to reduce the overexploitation of land in order to protect the integrity of biodiversity and to also ensure a continuous supply of valuable ecosystem services. Keywords : Land-use/land-cover change, remote sensing, geographical information system, dynamic change, YongDeng County. DOI: 10.7176/JEES/10-6-15 Publication date: June 30 th 2020

Comparison of the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Land Use Changes in Four Municipalities of China Based on Intensity Analysis

Land use/cover change (LUCC) is becoming one of the most important and interesting problems in the study of global environmental change. Identifying the spatiotemporal behavior and associated driving forces behind changes in land use is crucial for the regional sustainable utilization of land resources. In this study, we consider the four municipalities of China (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing) and compare their spatiotemporal changes in land use from 1990 to 2015 by employing intensity analysis and barycenter migration models. We then discuss their driving forces. The results show that the largest reduction and increase variations were mainly concentrated in arable and construction land, respectively. The decrement and increment were the largest in Shanghai, followed by Beijing and Tianjin, and the least in Chongqing. Furthermore, the results of the barycenter migration model indicate that in addition to Beijing, the migration distances of construction land were longer than those of arable land in three other cities. Moreover, the application of intensity analysis revealed that the rate of land use change was also the greatest in Shanghai and the slowest in Chongqing during the whole study period, with all of their arable land being mainly transformed into construction land. The driving force analysis results suggest that the spatial and temporal patterns of land use change were the results of the socio-economic development, national policies, and major events. In other words, where there was a high rate of economic and population growth, the intensity of land use change was relatively large.

Analysis of Land Use Change in Jining City

Based on the LANDSAT remote sensing image data of 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015, this paper applies RS, GIS, mathematical statistics and other methods, mainly about land use transfer matrix, single land use dynamic and comprehensive land use dynamic to analyse land use change in Jining City during the period from 2000 to 2015. The results show that: (1) The transfer intensity of grass is gradually increasing. Dry land and house-site in the countryside are transferred largely into town house. The transfer between dry land and house-site in the countryside is obvious. The imported area of waters is always larger than the exported area in three periods. Retention rate of dry land has remained relatively high. In addition, the unutilized land retention rate varies greatly. (2) The single dynamic of paddy field, town house and unutilized land are large, indicating changes of these types are intensive; the lower dynamic of dry land and waters indicates the stability of these types is good. The comprehensive land use dynamics first decreased and then increased, indicating that the intensity of land use change in Jining City first decreased and then increased, and the overall land use change is large.

TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF SOIL OCCUPATION IN MUCURI WATERSHED BETWEEN 1989 AND 2015

Anthropogenic action has caused intense changes in land use and cover over the decades. Identifying and knowing these changes makes it possible to measure the impacts that can be generated as well as to identify patterns of the development of a particular region and the relationship between society and land use. Thus, it is intended to identify the changes made in the land use and occupation of the Mucuri river basin between 1989 and 2015. So, this study used remote sensing techniques and tools besides aerial photographs to map the region and to identify surface behavior. Within the Mucuri basin, the soil had been mostly occupied by classes of forest and agricultural area, consistent with the social and economic reality of the region over the last decades. The changes that have occurred indicate a reduction in water availability, growth in urban occupation and, in many cases, soil and vegetation cover deterioration.

Integrating remote sensing and life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts of copper-silver-gold mining: A case study from Laos

Environmental impacts from the mining is so diverse in nature that it requires different tools to quantify. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the popular tools that can assess the impact of mining activities. Remote sensing (RS) based imagery analysis helps to explore the change in earth surface by providing long-term historical data which is very useful for mining induced environmental impact assessment. Therefore, we used the knowledge of RS based image analysis to analyze the direct footprint of mining that is the land use change. Besides, we also used LCA to quantify the environmental impacts focusing mainly on Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Gross Energy Requirement (GER). The case study site was a copper-gold-silver mine located in Laos, called Phu Kham mine. The RS based image analysis suggests that the land use change due to mining during 2007–2018 was approximately 3.98 km2 whereas the overall intensity of land use change in the same period was about 0.0052515 m2/kg of concentrate. We also analyzed the indirect CO2 emission from vegetation lost by mining. The GER of the mine showed average value for an open-pit copper mine though the CO2 emission was lower mainly due to the use of hydroelectricity. We also tried to quantify the productivity of the mine site. The findings from this study was also compared with existing literature. Though the impact of the mine was lower, there is room for improvement. We have tried to provide a few directions for that as well.

A Scenario-Based Simulation of Land System Changes on Dietary Changes: A Case Study in China

The dietary change of Chinese residents is driven by increasing incomes and urbanization, which will bring about non-negligible changes in the food production of the land system. To explore how dietary changes might influence future land systems and the environment, this research hypothesizes two potential dietary change scenarios in the period 2010–2030, based on the current trends and Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (DGCR), and applies the CLUMondo model to simulate the spatiotemporal patterns of land systems and estimates a lifecycle’s environmental impacts on dietary change. As shown in the results, dietary changes would obviously alter the land cover, agricultural intensity, and livestock density of land systems, and the changes in land use intensity are noteworthy. If the current trend of dietary change is unchecked, the intensification and expansion of agriculture and animal husbandry would be widely distributed in North China and Northwest China, where the intensity of cropland was low in the past and the ecosystem was relatively fragile. Moreover, the increasing demands for food lead to sharp increases in the carbon footprint, water footprint, and ecological footprint from food production. In contrast, the balanced diet recommended by DGCR could offer considerable environmental benefits. This diet is conducive to cutting down land use intensity, helping natural systems avoid intensification, and the expansion of agriculture and animal husbandry, which lower footprints from food production and have helped to implement the policy of returning croplands to grassland and forests in China. Therefore, popularizing balanced diets could be a win–win for human health and environmental sustainability.

Trends and driving forces of China’s virtual land consumption and trade

Land resources are important for China’s rapid economic development, especially for food and construction. China’s land resources are under tremendous pressures, and therefore land use is increasingly displaced to other parts of the world. This study analyses the evolution and driving forces of China’s land consumption from 1995 to 2015. The main results show that China’s land footprint increased from 8.8% of the global land resources under human use in 1995 to 15.7% in 2015. China’s domestic land resources are mainly used for serving domestic consumption. Moreover, China needs to import virtual land from foreign countries to satisfy 30.8% of its land demand. Among the three land use types of cropland, grassland and forests, grassland had the largest fraction in China’s land footprint from 1995 to 2000, while forest has become the largest one since 2000. China’s virtual land trade experienced a sharp increase in net imports from 9.4E + 04 km2 in 1995 to 3.4E + 06 km2 in 2015. Observing China’s virtual land network by a cluster analysis, this study concludes that China keeps tight relationships with Australia, Japan, Brazil and Korea for its cropland consumption, and Canada, USA, Mexico, Australia, Korea and Japan are relevant for its grassland consumption. In addition, decomposition analysis results show that affluence is the major driving factor for China’s land consumption, while changes in land use intensity could mitigate some of the related effects. Lastly, policy recommendations are proposed so that China can move toward sustainable land management.

Effects of land use type, spatial patterns and host presence on Leishmania tropica vectors activity

BackgroundLeishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease, caused by the infection of Leishmania parasites which are transmitted by the bite of infected female phlebotomine sand flies. Leishmania tropica is transmitted by Phlebotomus sergenti and Phlebotomus arabicus while the main reservoir host is the rock hyrax. A marked increase in the incidence of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) caused by L. tropica has been detected in recent years in Israel; it is associated with infections which have emerged in new urban and rural foci. The objective of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the preferred habitat, spatial activities and host-sand fly relationships of both species of vectors within various types of land use.MethodsUsing CDC-type traps, we investigated the activity levels of sand flies. A field survey was conducted in 2016 at Elifelet, an agricultural village characterized by various types of land use. Movement patterns of P. sergenti between rock-piles were investigated by using colour-marked sugar baits and analyses of recapture patterns. In 2017, a survey was conducted in the hilly Jordan River area, by comparing sand flies and rock hyrax activities in relation to the size of rock-piles and vegetation cover.ResultsBoth sexes of both species were found to have a clear preference for rocky habitats over other land use types in rural landscapes. Movement patterns of P. sergenti were characterized by their high presence close to the rocks and an exponential decrease in their recapture, commensurate with the distance from the rocks. Host-sand fly relationships were found to have a higher correlation between rock hyrax activity levels for females than for males of both species of sand flies. Males exhibited the strongest association with the size of rock-piles.ConclusionsThe results suggest a strong affinity of both phlebotomine vector species to the rocky habitats of the Mediterranean areas. We suggest that rock-piles are associated with populations of rock hyraxes attracting female sand flies seeking blood sources. Rapid human population growth, coupled with intensive land-use changes and the creation of artificial rock-piles, which created potential habitats for both vectors and hosts in the proximity of many settlements, have increased the prevalence of L. tropica among the human population in the region.