Landscape Patches Research Articles

Strengthening a Regional Green Infrastructure through Improved Multifunctionality and Connectedness: Policy Suggestions from Sardinia, Italy

A wide body of research in recent years has studied either green infrastructures as providers of multiple ecosystem services, especially at the urban level, or ecological corridors and the issue of connectivity between landscape patches in the face of growing fragmentation. However, not many studies have analyzed how the two concepts can be combined to ground evidence-based policy and planning recommendations. In this study, a methodological approach for such a combination is proposed: after mapping a regional green infrastructure building upon the assessment of multiple ecosystem services and a network of ecological corridors through the resistance to movement of species, the two spatial layouts are combined so as to analyze correlations between the potential provision of ecosystem services and the resistance to movement. The methodology is applied in the case of the island of Sardinia, whose self-containment makes it possible to discard potential effects from surrounding areas, hence facilitating the implementation of the model. The outcomes of the regression model point out three ecosystem services as the most important factors that should be targeted by appropriate spatial policies if connectivity is to be increased: regulation of micro and local climate, forestry productivity, and cultural identity and heritage values.

Landscape Metrics Explain the Ecological Susceptibility of Terrestrial Ecosystems

This study examines the effects of the change in the shape of landscape patches, known as landscape structure, on ecological susceptibility, which is defined using the object-oriented method. The aim is to determine whether ecological susceptibility is influenced by the shape of the landscape patches in the southern basin of the Caspian Sea. The multivariate linear regression approach is applied to discover the extent to which the mean, median, and weighted average of the landscape structure metrics can explain the total variations of the ecological susceptibility. To determine the optimal models, an intermodel comparison is conducted using the Akaike information criterion. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses were performed to determine how sensitive ecological susceptibility is to changes in the variables of the models and how they behave under varying conditions. The models (0.64≥r2≥0.27, p ≤ 0.05) indicate that the landscape structure metrics can be applied to predict ecological susceptibility. Examining the mean, median, and weighted average of the landscape metrics in estimating ecological susceptibility also reveals that the models made by the mean and median values have less uncertainty than those developed by the weighted average. The results show that the regularity or irregularity in the shape of the landscape patches and the degree of contiguity of the land use/land cover patches can significantly affect ecological susceptibility. Closed deciduous broad-leaf forest patches, closed mixed forest patches, and open mixed forest patches can be considered crucial land use/land covers to estimate ecological susceptibility.

Spatial Relationship between Land Use Patterns and Ecosystem Services Value—Case Study of Nanjing

The degree of land use reflects the progress of social and economic development; however, it also has a direct impact on land resources. Maximizing the ecosystem services of land resources in a limited space is a key issue in China’s rapid urbanization. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the spatial relationship between land use patterns and ecosystem services to enhance the benefits of urban ecology. First, we used the landscape pattern index to represent land use patterns and the equivalence factor method to quantify the ecosystem services value (ESV); second, spatial autocorrelation and spatial autoregression were used to explore the spatial relationship between the landscape pattern index and ESV. Our main conclusions were that (1) the landscape pattern index and ESV both showed obvious spatial aggregation, but that of ESV was more significant; (2) the largest patch index and contagion index had a greater degree of influence on ESV than other variables, with the largest patch index having a positive effect and the contagion index having a negative effect; (3) it was necessary to cultivate the landscape dominance of land patches in ecological spatial regulation and to form large-scale ecological agglomeration in key ecological source areas and nodes. The research results can ensure that land resources exert a higher level of ecological value by adjusting the spatial form of the landscape patch.

Spillover Effects of Built-Up Land Expansion Under Ecological Security Constraint at Multiple Spatial Scales

Land-use change is a global issue, and the built-up land expansion has affected the ecological landscape patterns of the major river basins in the world. However, measurement of the ecological risks of potential landscape and identification of the dynamic relationships by natural and human-driven built-up land expansion at different zoning scales are still less understood. Based on multi-period Landsat satellite image data, we combined remote sensing (RS) and geography information systems (GIS) technologies with Spatial Durbin Panel Model to quantitatively analyze the landscape ecological effects under the built-up land expansion in the Yellow River Basin. The results showed that there is spatial heterogeneity in the built-up land expansion and ecological security patterns, with the expansion gravity center gradually spreading from the downstream to the middle and upstream areas, and the most dramatic change in landscape patches of ecological safety patterns occurring around the year 2000. At different zoning scales, there is a spatial spillover effect on the interaction between built-up land expansion and ecological security, with the significance of the regression estimates decreasing from large sample sizes to small sample sizes. Our findings highlighted the importance of spatial heterogeneity at different zoning scales in identifying the dynamic relationship between built-up land expansion and ecological security, scientific planning of land resources, and mitigation of ecological and environmental crises.

Spatial patterns of unburned refugia in Siberian larch forests during the exceptional 2020 fire season

AbstractAimWildfire is an essential disturbance agent that creates burn mosaics, or a patchwork of burned and unburned areas across the landscape. Unburned patches, fire refugia, serve as carbon sinks and seed sources for forest regeneration in burned areas. In the Cajander larch (Larix cajanderi Mayr.) forests of north‐eastern Siberia, an unprecedented wildfire season in 2020 and little documentation of landscape patch dynamics have resulted in research gaps about the characteristics of fire refugia in northern latitude forests, which are warming faster than other global forest ecosystems. We aim to characterize the 2010 distribution of fire refugia for these forest ecosystems and evaluate their topographic drivers.LocationNorth‐eastern Siberia across the North‐east Siberian Taiga and the Cherskii‐Kolyma Mountain Tundra ecozones.Time period2001–2020.Major taxa studiedCajander larch.MethodsWe used Landsat imagery to define burned and unburned patches, and the Arctic digital elevation model to calculate topographic variables. We characterized the size and density of fire refugia. We sampled individual pixels (n = 80,000) from an image stack that included a binary burned/unburned, elevation, slope, aspect, topographic position index, ruggedness, and tree cover from 2001 to 2020. We evaluated the topographic drivers of fire refugia with boosted regression trees.ResultsWe found no substantial difference in fire refugia size and density across the region. The fire refugia size averaged 7.2 ha (0.09–150,439 ha). The majority of interior burned patches exceed the potential wind dispersal distance from fire refugia. Topographic position index and terrain steepness were important predictors of fire refugia.Main conclusionsUnprecedented wildfires in 2020 did not impact fire refugia formation. Fire refugia are strongly controlled by topographic positions such as uplands and lowlands that influence microsite hydrological conditions. Fire refugia contribute to postfire landscape heterogeneity that preserves ecosystem functions, seed sources, habitat, and carbon sinks.

Establishing and Optimizing the Ecological Security Pattern in Shaanxi Province (China) for Ecological Restoration of Land Space

Land space underpins an ecological civilization. A thorough grasp of regional natural resources and subsequent optimization of the ecological security pattern are both essential for the comprehensive development and overall planning of the management of natural resources. In this study, we established and optimized the ecological security pattern in Shaanxi Province, China. Landscape patches distinguished by high importance of ecosystem services (carbon fixation and oxygen release, water conservation, habitat maintenance, and soil conservation) and high sensitivity of ecological environment to human interference (ecological sensitivity index) were extracted as ecological sources. An ecological resistance surface was built based on the following resistance factors: land-use type, topographic position index, and soil erosion intensity. A minimum cumulative resistance model was used to identify ecological corridors. Our results showed that those ecological sources with high to extreme ecological importance and sensitivity together covered an area of 67,457 km2 (32.8% of the total land area of Shaanxi Province). A total of 32 ecological nodes were identified at the center of important ecological sources to serve as main areas for implementing ecological protection projects. In addition, 72 ecological corridors were identified, towards which efforts should be targeted to maintain their functions for the inter-connection and serial connection of ecological nodes and source patches. The ecological corridors create favorable habitats for wildlife and superior spaces for ecological migration based on the blue and green linear corridor system. According to these findings, we propose establishing an ecological security pattern featuring “two barriers, three belts, and multiple corridors” in Shaanxi Province and that the green ecological security barriers should be strengthened based on their natural background and resource endowments.

Time-series maps reveal widespread change in plant functional type cover across Arctic and boreal Alaska and Yukon

Widespread changes in the distribution and abundance of plant functional types (PFTs) are occurring in Arctic and boreal ecosystems due to the intensification of disturbances, such as fire, and climate-driven vegetation dynamics, such as tundra shrub expansion. To understand how these changes affect boreal and tundra ecosystems, we need to first quantify change for multiple PFTs across recent years. While landscape patches are generally composed of a mixture of PFTs, most previous moderate resolution (30 m) remote sensing analyses have mapped vegetation distribution and change within land cover categories that are based on the dominant PFT; or else the continuous distribution of one or a few PFTs, but for a single point in time. Here we map a 35 year time-series (1985–2020) of top cover (TC) for seven PFTs across a 1.77 × 106 km2 study area in northern and central Alaska and northwestern Canada. We improve on previous methods of detecting vegetation change by modeling TC, a continuous measure of plant abundance. The PFTs collectively include all vascular plants within the study area as well as light macrolichens, a nonvascular class of high importance to caribou management. We identified net increases in deciduous shrubs (66 × 103 km2), evergreen shrubs (20 × 103 km2), broadleaf trees (17 × 103 km2), and conifer trees (16 × 103 km2), and net decreases in graminoids (−40 × 103 km2) and light macrolichens (−13 × 103 km2) over the full map area, with similar patterns across Arctic, oroarctic, and boreal bioclimatic zones. Model performance was assessed using spatially blocked, nested five-fold cross-validation with overall root mean square errors ranging from 8.3% to 19.0%. Most net change occurred as succession or plant expansion within areas undisturbed by recent fire, though PFT TC change also clearly resulted from fire disturbance. These maps have important applications for assessment of surface energy budgets, permafrost changes, nutrient cycling, and wildlife management and movement analysis.

Variation in diet of frugivorous bats in fragments of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest associated with vegetation density

AbstractSpecies distribution and persistence have long been known to vary with landscape structure; however, continued human activities in altered landscapes raise many questions as to how habitat fragmentation impacts the biology of persistent animal populations. Using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis, we examined interspecific variation in the diet of frugivorous bats among remnant habitat patches of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. We hypothesized that the diet of individuals captured in habitat patches would be different than those captured in contiguous habitats. We predicted that bats would alter their realized dietary niche breadth, taking food items (i.e., fruits or insects) according to landscape structure. However, more mobile species should be less impacted by small-scale landscape changes. We predicted that (1) a wide-ranging species (Artibeus lituratus), which move through open areas, will be less affected by small-scale landscape attributes, patch size, composition, and isolation; while (2) two narrow-ranging species (Carollia perspicillata and Sturnira lilium) will have more variation between populations in niche breadth and isotopic ratio ranges dependant on the local environment. Using Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) to rank a priori selected candidate models to explain variation, we found that fragment composition, largely involving vegetation density rather than spatial aspects of landscape structure (i.e., patch area, isolation) best explained diet variation in frugivorous bats. Additionally, there was evidence that wide-ranging A. lituratus were less impacted by differences in the landscape than narrow-ranging species. This supports the prediction that bats resident to fragments have altered feeding behavior, in response to environmental perturbation.

Importance assessment and conservation strategy for rural landscape patches in Huang-Huai plain based on network robustness analysis

With increasing landscape fragmentation, forest-dominated landscape patches between villages play a highly important role in connecting important urban habitats. Unlike urban environments, these rural landscape patches lack targeted protection strategies and face a significant risk of destruction. This study investigates the philosophy of green infrastructure while considering the rural ecological landscape. Specifically, the connectivity of the rural landscape patches was chosen as the research focus. Taking Xuzhou as a case study, potential ecological corridors and stepping stones were identified through the circuit theoretical model and a multi-level green infrastructure network was constructed. Two important stepping-stone networks were selected from the multi-level green infrastructure network and robustness analysis was performed under three scenarios (centrality destruction， risk destruction， random destruction). By comparing the changes in network indices (connectivity robustness, global efficiency, articulation vertices, assortativity), the more important landscape patches in villages were screened out and corresponding protection strategies were developed. The results revealed that forest landscape patches near rivers had high centrality and were at risk of destruction; accordingly, in the process of village construction and development, the protection of these patches should be prioritised. The results also reflect the importance of forest patches in some villages. This result provides support for rural planning and site selection in concentrated residential areas.

Spatial Variability in Inorganic Soil Nitrogen Production in a Mixed-Vegetation Urban Landscape

Urban landscapes are not homogeneous, and small-scale variations in plant community or management inputs can give rise to a large range of environmental conditions. In this paper, we investigated the small-scale variability of soil nitrogen (N) properties in a single urban landscape that has distinctly different patches or types of cover. We specifically measured soil net N mineralization, nitrification, and exchangeable forms of inorganic N for patches with traditional turfgrass versus patches with common turfgrass alternatives such as ornamental grasses, groundcovers, and mulches. All soil N properties were variable among landscape patches, showing that soil N processing can vary on scales of a few meters. Notably, both mineralization and nitrification were the highest in a patch covered with perennial peanut, but exchangeable nitrate (NO3−) was low for the same soil, indicating that soils under perennial peanut may be producing high levels of inorganic N but that the produced N does not stay in the soil, possibly leaching to underlying groundwater. We recommend future studies on the mechanisms that drive the variable N properties seen under distinct urban landscape patches, with special emphasis on potential patterns in N losses for mixed-vegetation landscapes.

Spatiotemporally explicit prediction of future ecosystem service provisioning in response to climate change, sea level rise, and adaptation strategies

We present a framework to relate the provision of multiple, interacting ecosystem services to climate change and land use adaptation, by combining hydrological process models with statistical species’ distribution models and transfer functions to upscale plot data to the landscape scale. Functional traits of the projected plant communities predict provisional and species conservation services, whereas the hydrological model predicts water-related regulatory services. We applied the framework to coastal areas of the Baltic Sea to predict future ecosystem service outputs in yearly time steps from 2010 to 2100, based on a ‘high emissions’ climate change scenario, a projected sea-level rise of 1.05 m, and four land-management options corresponding to future coastal adaptation strategies. The “Hold the line” strategy implies continual pumping of excess rainwater into the sea to allow farm income from grassland usage, together with high conservation values for rare plants and meadow birds. Towards the end of the century, with an increasing sea-level rise, this results in reverse groundwater flows from sea to land and soil salinization of grasslands. Conversely, “managed realignment” implies the abandonment of pumping, thereby changing grasslands to reeds, reducing farm income and species conservation values, but promoting water retention and carbon sequestration by peat production. Between 2010 and 2100, the time series averaged across all landscape patches masked substantial spatial shifts in the outputs of ecosystem services from lower to higher elevations, emphasizing the relevance of considering both time and space.Multifunctional landscapes, by compromising between provisioning and regulatory ecosystem services, may create the response diversity needed to successfully adapt to climate change and sea-level rise.

Both landscape and local factors influence plant and hexapod communities of industrial water-abstraction sites.

At the landscape level, intensification of agriculture, fragmentation, and destruction of natural habitats are major causes of biodiversity loss that can be mitigated at small spatial scales. However, the complex relationships between human activities, landscapes, and biodiversity are poorly known. Yet, this knowledge could help private stakeholders managing seminatural areas to play a positive role in biodiversity conservation.We investigated how water‐abstraction sites could sustain species diversity in vascular‐plant communities and two taxonomic groups of insect communities in a fragmented agricultural landscape.Landscape‐scale variables (connectivity indices and surrounding levels of herbicide use), as well as site‐specific variables (soil type for vascular plants, floral availability for Rhopalocera, and low herbaceous cover for Orthoptera), were correlated to structural and functional metrics of species community diversity for these taxonomic groups, measured on 35 industrial sites in the Ile‐de‐France region in 2018–2019. Rhopalocera and Orthoptera consisted essentially of species with a high degree of dispersal and low specialization, able to reach the habitat patches of the fragmented landscape of the study area. Sandy soil harbored more diverse vascular‐plant communities. Plant diversity was correlated to a greater abundance of Rhopalocera and a lower richness of Orthoptera.Increasing landscape connectivity was related to higher abundance of plants and Rhopalocera, and a higher evenness index for Orthoptera communities. Higher levels of herbicide use were related to a decrease in the biodiversity of plants and Rhopalocera abundance. High levels of herbicide favored high‐dispersal generalist plants, while high levels of connectivity favored low‐dispersal plants. Specialist Orthoptera species were associated with low herbaceous cover and connectivity.Water‐abstraction sites are valuable seminatural habitats for biodiversity. Changing intensive agricultural practices in surrounding areas would better contribute to conserving and restoring biodiversity on these sites.

Measuring the zonal responses of nitrogen output to landscape pattern in a flatland with river network: a case study in Taihu Lake Basin, China.

Landscape pattern changes induced by rapid urbanization and intensified agricultural activities have exerted great pressure on regional water purification services. Relationship between landscape metrics and nitrogen-related ecosystem services has been a major concern of many scholars and has been widely used for guidance for land use and cover (LULC) management. However, clear zonal differences may exist, especially in highly developed reticular river network area, thus limiting our understanding of nitrogen output (NOP) to landscape pattern in the details. The spatial distribution of regional NOP was obtained based on the InVEST model. The zonal responses of NOP to landscape patter were examined under hydraulic subregions and subbasin scale. The results show that the unit value of average NOP in the Taihu Lake Basin (TLB) was 146.14 (kg/km2), and the total output reached 23677.92 t in 2020. The simulation NOP showed reasonable agreement with verified water quality observations in the lake inlet stations, with an R2 of 0.76. In terms of space composition, merely cropland have significant effects on NOP in the whole basin scale, while the explanatory variables include cropland and developed land in Pudong (PD), Puxi (PX), Wuchengxiyu (WC), and Hangjiahu (HJ) regions. In Huxi (HX) and Yangchengdianmao (YC) regions, cropland and forest are the significant impact types, while in (Zhexi) ZX region, cropland, developed land, and forest are significant impact types. In the space configuration, the percentage of landscape (PLAND) or largest patch index (LPI) of cropland showed positive effects about NOP, whether in the whole basin or the hydraulic subregions. Edge density (ED) (-3.48), number of patches (NP) (-3.91), and percentage of like adjacencies (PLAND) (-2.80) of the forest exhibit negative correlations with NOP, in the HX, ZX, and YC region, respectively. It displays diversiform in the response of NOP to the landscape metric of developed land, which speculate that the heterogeneity of developed land can also have a constraint on NOP, in the highly urbanized areas with less forest area. In addition, the total nitrogen output of the TLB needs to be controlled, especially in HJ region which was identified as the sensitive area of pollution sources with the largest NOP and should be paid more attention to. Compared with the administrative management unit, it is more reasonable to control and manage the pollution sources by referring to the hydraulic subregions and subbasin units. Senior managers are required to strengthen communication and cooperation with hydraulic subregions across administrative regions. However, when managing NOP through the landscape modifications, measures should be taken to reduce the aggregation of nitrogen sources and increase the fragmentation of nitrogen sinks. As for high aggregation developed and agricultural land regions, the types of land used should be enriched to help the sustainable development.

A novel strategy to assimilate category variables in land-use models based on Dirichlet distribution

Data assimilation is an effective approach to reduce the propagation and cumulative errors of land use models. However, as the discrete categorical outputs of land use models, land use data assimilation requires a novel approach distinguished from the traditional assimilation for continuous variables. Here, Bayesian inference for categorical distribution is introduced into a land use cellular automata model to update multiple discrete state variables. The accuracies with data assimilation outperform those of simulation-only. By 2009, kappa coefficient and figure of merit in the entire area increase by 0.34% and 1.78%, respectively, and in fine-scale areas where drastic and representative land use changes occurred, increase by 23.88% and 38.39%, respectively. The assimilation performance is associated with the landscape patch size and the length of the assimilation cycle. This study innovatively introduces the conjugate prior features of Dirichlet distribution into land use assimilation, providing insights and references for discrete variable data assimilation.

Optimization of Landscape Ecological Security Patterns and Planning in Low Hilly Areas —A Case Study of Beigong Town, Fengtai District, Beijing City, China

With the continuous expansion of mega-cities in China, the landscape pattern of the original urban-rural area is broken, resulting in serious fragmentation of landscape patches in the fringe area of the urban center and threatening urban ecological security. Therefore, how to consider the needs for construction and development based on securing ecological security patterns is a key consideration for the fringe areas of megacities. The study takes Beigong Town as the research object and uses the MSPA model analysis method to extract nine ecological source sites that are important for ecological network construction. Then, the study constructs a comprehensive ecological resistance surface based on the MCR minimum cumulative resistance model, generates minimum cost paths to simulate regional potential corridors, and constructs the ecological security pattern in Beigong Town. The study further combines the current situation of land use in Beigong Town to optimize the ecological safety pattern and proposes the planning control systems, which provides the basis for the next planning and construction.

景观格局视角下晋西三川河流域径流变化归因分析

PDF HTML阅读 XML下载 导出引用 引用提醒 景观格局视角下晋西三川河流域径流变化归因分析 DOI: 10.5846/stxb202105131259 作者: 作者单位: 作者简介: 通讯作者: 中图分类号: 基金项目: 国家自然科学基金重点项目（51838003） Attribution analysis of runoff changes in the Sanchuan River Basin of Shanxi Province from the perspective of landscape patterns Author: Affiliation: Fund Project: 摘要 | 图/表 | 访问统计 | 参考文献 | 相似文献 | 引证文献 | 资源附件 | 文章评论 摘要:黄土高原大规模人类活动造成下垫面剧烈变化，流域景观格局改变，影响产汇流过程。学科融合视角下，基于Budyko水热耦合方程、景观指数计算以及回归分析等多学科方法，以晋西黄土丘陵沟壑区三川河流域为例，分析不同尺度景观格局变化造成流域径流量变化的原因，判别地理景观空间对产汇流过程的影响。结果表明：（1）1980年至今是研究区径流锐减阶段，其中下垫面变化对径流贡献率为60.81％；（2）1980年至今的下垫面变化造成流域景观斑块破碎、形状趋于规整，景观格局分割度、蔓延度提高；（3）利用逐步线性回归模型可将径流减少的景观格局变化定位到具体地理空间，流域东部、北部主要支流上游与两条支流汇流处的林地核心斑块面积减少以及城市建设区域对于水体连通性的破坏。通过跨学科方法探究景观格局与径流变化之间的潜在空间关联，揭示径流对景观格局变化的响应，可为黄土高原水资源管理与生态规划提供决策依据。 Abstract:Large-scale human activities on the Loess Plateau have caused dramatic changes in the substratum and altered the landscape pattern of the watershed, even affected the runoff production and sink processes. Based on the Budyko hydrothermal coupling equation, landscape index calculation, and regression analysis methods, this paper takes the Sanchuan River Basin in western Shanxi Province, located in the loess hilly gully area, as an example, to analyze the causes of runoff changes in the basin caused by changes in landscape patterns at different scales and to discern the influence of geographic landscape space on the production and sink processes. The results show that:(1) the runoff in the study area has decreased sharply from 1980 to the present, in which the contribution of subsurface changes to runoff was 60.81%. (2) The substrate changes from 1980 to the present caused the fragmentation and regularization of the landscape patches in the watershed, and the fragmentation and spreading of the landscape pattern increased. (3) Using a stepwise linear regression model, the landscape pattern changes in runoff reduction could be localized to specifically geographic spaces. The reduction of the core areas of woodland patches in the upper reaches of the eastern and northern tributaries and their confluence, and the disruption of the connectivity of water patches by the urban built-up areas at the confluence of the tributaries, are the direct spatial causes of the runoff reduction in watershed. An interdisciplinary approach is used to explore the potentially spatial correlation between landscape patterns and runoff changes, and to reveal the response of runoff to landscape pattern changes, which can provide a decision basis for water resources management and ecological planning on the Loess Plateau. 参考文献 相似文献 引证文献

Hybrid Spatiotemporal Graph Convolutional Network for Detecting Landscape Pattern Evolution From Long-Term Remote Sensing Images

The remote sensing time-series change detection algorithm based on the pixel or single landscape patch ignores the change analysis of spatial structure information. Inspired by graph convolutional network (GCN) modeling, a set of landscapes (nodes) and their relationships (edges) are proposed. In this study, a parallel strategy in spatial GCN and progressive strategy in temporal GCN, called the hybrid GCN model network as a holistic framework, was proposed to accurately capture both spatial and temporal variations in landscape patterns based on yearly Landsat time series. A super-patch (i.e., fixed patch class surrounded by a one-hop neighbor patch) was selected as the input of the GCN network. First, a spatial GCN model with three parallel graph convolutional layers was adopted to classify landscape pattern types. Three dominant categories of landscape patterns over the past three decades have been identified. Second, four landscape metrics in super-patches were proposed for the quantitative characterization of changes in landscape patterns. Finally, a temporal GCN model with two progressive graph convolutional layers was used to detect six types of patch changes, which were applied to continuously detect the landscape pattern evolution processes. Regardless of the spatial GCN and temporal GCN, they provided satisfactory performance using the training and validation sets with overall accuracy > 92% and Kappa coefficient > 0.90, and loss values converging to 0.049 and 0.128, respectively, based on NLLLoss function until 500 epochs. It is believed that the hybrid GCN model has great potential for mining possible implicit spatiotemporal relationships and future evolution of landscape patterns.

Application of spatial- and diachronic-process analysis of landscape development in Central Lika, Croatia from 1980 to 2012

The paper presents structural features and the process and intensity of landscape changes in the Central Lika Region of Croatia, in the transitional, post-socialist and post-war periods (1980–2012). The aim of this paper is to analyse regularities and interrelations between the changes in structural features and the intensity of the processes that cause change. By using GIS spatial analysis methods, the shape, position, and condition of landscape patches were defined for each year. The diachronic process analysis, with the application of a specially-developed index — the Landscape Development Index (di) — made it possible to determine the intensity of development of individual landscape elements. The landscape was observed using the concept of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) and, for this purpose, data from the CORINE Land Cover database were used for 1980 and 2012. The results showed fragmentation and an increase in the number and complexity of patches, as well as a decrease of the core patch area. Consequently, the increase of the share of edge areas has increased vulnerability to external influences and changes. Applying the Landscape Development Index (di) showed advantages compared to a standard comparison of the two conditions or synthetic indices, enabling the intensity of each observed phenomenon/process to be determined, and allowing for deeper spatial and temporal analysis as well as better understanding of landscape development.

Dynamic simulation patterns and spatiotemporal analysis of land-use/land-cover changes in the Wuhan metropolitan area, China

With the rapid socioeconomic development in China, the competition for space in land-use conversion is getting fierce. The Wuhan metropolitan area, as one of the main areas of modern agriculture and manufacturing, has been significantly affected by urbanization, industrialization, and national development policies, resulting in regional man-land contradiction. In this complex region, scientifically measuring the land-use/land-cover (LULC) dynamics and exploring the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the LULC changes are important tasks for local officials and decision makers in the management of urban expansion and land-use planning. In this study, an integrated logistic multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) cellular automata (CA) Markov (logistic-MCE-CA-Markov) model and a geographic information system (GIS) were used to evaluate and predict the LULC changes. The analysis was based on six LULC maps at equal temporal intervals derived from land-use data for 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, along with topographic spatial layers (elevation and slope) derived from an ASTER digital elevation model. In addition, other spatial variables (points of interest, gross domestic product(GDP), population density, proximity to urban center, and proximity to transportation line) were incorporated in the simulation process. The simulated results obtained by the integrated logistic-MCE-CA-Markov model had a kappa coefficient of 88.582% and a figure of merit value of 27.935%. The results indicated that, under the influence of the various factors, the future land-use pattern of the Wuhan metropolitan area will be clearly transformed. From 2015 to 2025, it is predicted that the area of arable land and woodland will decrease by 1506.152 km2 and 1743.945 km2, respectively, and urban land expansion will mainly come from arable land, woodland, and other construction land. With the enhancement of the human disturbance intensity, the natural landscape patches will become segmented, and the number of individual patches will increase gradually, enhancing the spatial heterogeneity. The simulation results could not only be used to monitor future LULC trends, but could also help local decision makers to provide policy support for land-use planning and management.

Mapping and characterizing animals’ places of interest in forest environment

Abstract. Fauna impacts its environment as well as spatial environment influences fauna space use. Forest management implies taking into account pressure from animals in fragile-balanced patches. Our goal is to propose maps that would benefit forest planning by reflecting individual movement and space use depending on the animal species and local spatiotemporal environment. The study case focuses on two species, roe deer and red deer, and on a forested site in the northeast of France. Movements of several individuals were analysed from collected GPS locations. Foraging places likely to correspond to intense research behaviour were computed using the First-Passage Time method. These places were assumed as being of interest and were characterized with landscape features and temporal information. Maps were produced to synthetize information about foraging places by defining adapted symbolizations. Then maps about functional space were proposed based on extrapolation of favourable or avoided areas from the characterized observed foraging places and space use. Landscape patches were mapped according to a gradient of potential interest by animals’ species, in order to highlight needs of specific planning actions in the forestry context. Map displays were driven by forestry end-use and designed so that to be compliant to a numeric geographical portal, giving access to different available on-line layers and computed created ones.