Types Of Land Development Research Articles

Prediction of the joint impacts of sea level rise and land development on distribution patterns of mangrove communities

Mangrove distribution along shorelines shows distinct zonation patterns; thus, different communities may face various influences from sea level rise (SLR) and land use. However, long-term change predictions are usually based only on the total extent of mangroves. Few studies have revealed how SLR and land development such as agriculture, aquaculture, and urbanization jointly affect different intertidal mangrove communities. This study proposed a novel framework combining SLAMM (Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model) and the CLUE-S (Conversion of Land Use and its Effect at Small regional extent) model to assess the potential impacts on upper and lower intertidal mangrove communities. Maoweihai in Guangxi, China, was selected as the study area and the potential impacts from the squeeze effect and mangrove expansion potential were evaluated. We established three scenarios combining SLR and land use patterns to predict mangrove coverage projections by 2070. The results showed that, under a single SLR driver, the upper intertidal mangroves would be more adaptive to rapid SLR than the lower intertidal mangroves. However, under the combined influence of the two drivers, the upper intertidal mangroves would experience larger squeeze effects than the lower intertidal mangroves, with up to 80.5% of suitable habitat lost. Moreover, the expansion potential of upper intertidal mangroves would be considerably more limited than that of lower intertidal mangroves. The length of the expandable habitat patch boundary of upper intertidal mangroves only reached 1.4–1.8 ​km, while that of the lower intertidal mangroves reached up to 99.2–111.2 ​km. Further, we found that aquaculture ponds and cropland are the top two land development types that could occupy suitable habitat and restrict the mangrove expansion potential. Our results highlight that timely improvement of land use policies to create available landward accommodation space for mangrove migration is essential to maintain the coverage and diversity of mangrove communities under SLR. The proposed method can be a helpful tool for adaptive mangrove conservation and management under climate change.

A land clearing index for high-frequency unsupervised monitoring of land development using multi-source optical remote sensing images

Timely information on land development is critical for preventing illegal construction, which is an increasingly serious problem in rapidly urbanizing countries. Although remote sensing has been widely used to observe land cover change, monitoring land development at a high frequency (e.g., weekly or daily) remains a challenge because of the lack of images with sufficient temporal resolution and methods independent of human supervision. This study developed a novel unsupervised method, namely, land clearing index (LCI)-based method, for monitoring land development at high frequencies. The LCI was proposed by examining the characteristics of the spectral change caused by the land clearing in the initial stage of land development. It is calculated with two images acquired at different times and can be used with an appropriate threshold to detect land development areas. Top-of-atmosphere reflectance (TOAR) data were found to be better than surface reflectance (SR) data for the use with the LCI-based method because the atmosphere effect played a positive role in distinguishing developed land from undeveloped land and suppressing the false alarms caused by the season change in vegetation. The major innovations of the LCI-based method are as follows: 1) applicable to the land development detection between images acquired by different optical sensors to allow for high-frequency detection; 2) can detect land development without training data and human supervision; 3) can detect various types of land development, such as converting farmland for building purposes, urban redevelopment, and land reclamation; and 4) simple, straightforward, and easy to implement. The LCI-based method was tested with different satellite images (Landsat-5, Landsat-7, Landsat-8, and Sentinel-2) for land development detection in nine cities selected worldwide. The average detection accuracy (DA), false-alarm rate (FR), and overall accuracy (OA) were 88.62%, 1.68%, and 98.22%, respectively. Compared with the traditional post-classification comparison based on the random forest algorithm, the LCI-based method produced better results and avoided the time-consuming work on sample selection. The LCI was also tested in each of the cities to detect land development at the various time intervals (5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year) in the different seasons (January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December). Approximately all the DAs were higher than 90.00%, while the FRs were highly related to the detection interval and ranged from 0.00% to 71.60%. The false alarms were mainly caused by the seasonal change in croplands, natural vegetation, shadows of mountains and buildings, and suspended sediment in the water. An approach was developed to calibrate the detection results of the LCI-based method for false alarm suppression. The false alarms were reduced by as much as 99.98% by reinforcing the LCI-based method with this calibration approach. The testing indicated that the LCI-based method is applicable and reliable for monitoring land development at a short time interval; thus, it is capable of preventing illegal construction.

The Impact of Land Use Change on Disaster Risk from the Perspective of Efficiency

The increasing demand of humankind has caused a large number of land use changes, which pose a direct or indirect threat to the environment while promoting economic growth. The lack of risk-oriented land use changes may increase the disaster risk in the region. Therefore, how to study the relationship between land use change and disaster risk deserves attention. In this study, a research framework with quantitative relationship between land use change and disaster risk was constructed from the perspective of efficiency. The framework integrated land use change, disaster losses and environment variable (runoff increment) into a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) assessment model to dynamically evaluate the impact of land use changes on disasters. The main conclusions include: (I) after the influence of runoff increment and random error was excluded, the overall risk score of counties and cities in Taiwan is 0.643, which represents a relatively high level, indicating that land use changes have caused high disaster risk; and (II) the vulnerability of land development in each county and city can be obtained through the comprehensive score of disaster risk the amount of unused input. The results of this study can help government agencies to rank various types of land development and then determine the acceptable risk level and incorporate disaster risk into land development.

Light pollution in the night sky of Toruń in the summer season

Abstract The paper presents results of research on light pollution in the night sky of Toruń. A permanent network of measuring stations has been established in the city, consisting of 24 sites representing various types of land development and land cover: single-family housing, city centre, multi-family housing, areas overgrown with vegetation and open areas. Within this network, a repeatable direct measurement of the sky brightness using an SQM photometer was carried out over a period of three consecutive months in the summer season, i.e. from June to September 2017. The measurement sessions were conducted in similar weather and astronomical conditions. Based on the obtained data, a spatial distribution of light pollution was determined, ranges of values obtained during the measurements were provided, and the results were additionally referred to the distinguished land cover categories and land development types.

Spatiotemporal analysis of land development in transitional China

This study investigates three types of land development in China, land for cities and towns, stand-alone industrial sites, and space devoted to transportation. Relying on shift-share analysis, spatial filtering and geographically weighted regressions, we find that the spatial patterns and underlying determinants of China's construction boom vary across subcategories and periods. City and town land development follows the administrative hierarchy, as it is especially pronounced in provincial capitals and centrally administrated municipalities, and is largely dependent on urbanization, passenger transport, and fixed assets investment. The proliferation of stand-alone industrial areas is mainly driven by the expansion of foreign direct investment, industrial adjustment, and the capacity of freight transport. Transportation land development is determined by the development of railway and highway systems as well as local economic development. Temporally, our results suggest that land development and its agglomeration accelerated from 1998 to 2002 to 2003–2008. Also, globalization had more influence during 1998–2002, whereas the role of decentralization and marketization became more significant in the period of 2003–2008.

Simulation of the spatial stresses due to territorial land development on Yellow River Delta Nature Reserve using a GIS-based assessment model.

This study aimed at assessing the stresses from land development in or around Yellow River Delta Nature Reserve (YRDNR) and identifying the impacted areas. Major land development types (reservoirs, pond, aquafarm, salt pan, road, residential land, industry land, farming land, and fishing land) in or around the YRDNR from 1995 to 2014 were identified using spatial data sets derived from remote sensing imageries. The spatial stresses were simulated by considering disturbance due to land development activities and accessibility of disturbance using a geographic information system based model. The stresses were then used to identify the impacted area by land development (IALD). The results indicated that main increasing land development types in the study area from 1995 to 2014 were salt pan and construction land. The 98.2% of expanded land development area and 93.7% of increased pump number showed a good control of reserve function zone on land development spread. The spatial stress values and percentages of IALD increased from 1995 to 2014, and IALD percentage exceeded 50% for both parts of YRDNR in 2014. The results of this study also provided the information that detailed planning of the YRDNR (2014-2020) could decrease the spatial stress and IALD percentage of the whole YRDNR on the condition that the area of land development activities increased by 24.4km2 from 2014 to 2020. Effective measures should be taken to protect such areas from being further disturbed in order to achieve the goal of a more effective conservation of the YRDNR, and attention should be paid to the disordered land development activities in or around the natural reserves.

Flood risk, climate change and settlement development: a micro-scale assessment of Austrian municipalities

This paper analyses the influence of climate change and land development on future flood risk for selected Austrian flood-prone municipalities. As part of an anticipatory micro-scale risk assessment we simulated four different inundation scenarios for current and future 100- and 300-year floods (which included a climate change allowance), developed scenarios of future settlement growth in floodplains and evaluated changes in flood damage potentials and flood risk until the year 2030. Findings show that both climate change and settlement development significantly increase future levels of flood risk. However, the respective impacts vary strongly across the different cases. The analysis indicates that local conditions, such as the topography of the floodplain, the spatial allocation of vulnerable land uses or the type of land development (e.g. residential, commercial or industrial) in the floodplain are the key determinants of the respective effects of climate change and land development on future levels of flood risk. The case study analysis highlights the general need for a more comprehensive consideration of the local determinants of flood risk in order to increase the effectiveness of an adaptive management of flood risk dynamics.

Spatio-temporal change of landuse pattern of rural settlements in developed area: A case study of Huishan distirict in Wuxi city

As the basic carrier for economic activities in the rural areas, rural settlements have attracts much academic attention all the time in the rural geography. From the perspective of spatial morphology and function, integrating land use data, remote sensing image and rural investigation material, this paper aims to analyze the spatio-temporal variation of morphology and function of rural settlements in Huishan district of Wuxi city based on spatial analysis methods such as ANN index, kernel density and growth intensity index. Later, the evolutionary mechanism and optimizing patterns are discussed. The empirical analysis indicates that after1980 the total area of rural residential land increased by 95%, and the rural residential land growth index changed in an opposite "U" shape, first increased quickly, later decreased slowly,but spatial agglomeration was kept completely. Industrial and commercial land has become the most important element of residential land growth in Huishan district, and has made residential land more diversified and integrated. In the industry and tourism village, the new added residential land expanded in the area outside the old ones, which is featured by diversity and multifunction, and the spatial morphology of settlement become more regular. On the contrary,in the agriculture village, settlements expanded very slowly, residential land kept the dominant position in the settlements, and the morphology of settlement was still irregular. After the year1980, policy reforms promoted the village multifunction and made village's function different from each other. Respectively, in corresponding to three economic and land development types(industrial town mode, tourism town mode and flexible agglomeration mode) could be applied to optimize the spatial morphology of settlements in the rural areas.

Spatial morphology evolution of rural settlements induced by tourism

Rural tourism has become an important driving force of rural urbanization in China. As the main reception base and important tourism attraction, tourism village is the core element of the tourism destination system. Integrating the method of PRA (Participatory Rural Assessment), GIS technology and high-resolution remote sensing images, this study aims to analyze the spatial morphology evolution of rural settlements induced by tourism through a comparative study of three tourism villages in Yesanpo tourism area. The results suggest the emergence of a “core-periphery” pattern of the spatial evolution of rural settlements. The closer to the core scenic spot, the higher degree of land-use intensity the village shows, as well as the more mature tourism function and greater change in landscape pattern. In particular, Gougezhuang shows an increase of the floor area ratio from 0.17 to 0.44, with the most mature tourism function and the lowest authenticity index of 0.448. Liujiahe has gone through the largest increase in construction land area from 17.3564 ha to 34.1128 ha, with moderately mature tourism function and relatively stable authenticity index of 0.566. Shangzhuang has the lowest construction land scale and intensity, with the poorest tourism function and most well-preserved landscape authenticity index of 0.942. Overall, in terms of the spatial morphology, the three villages show the characteristics of “modern town”, “semi-urbanization” and “traditional village” respectively, in corresponding to three land development types: “intensive reconstruction type”, “enclave extension type” and “in situ utilization type”. The spatial evolution patterns of these three villages imply the spatial characteristics of the touristization of traditional villages in different stages, and also have great representative value for the management of rural settlements in tourism areas in China.

The Application of Remote Sensing in the Extraction of Urban Iand Use Changes

Abstract Land utilization is mainly the one of the human conscious activity in natural environment, Remote sensing is a most common and most effective method of testing the changes in the economic environment and the type of land development. This paper conducts a preliminary analysis based on the land use in Beijing that land-use change in Beijing and the reasons according to data analysis, and pointed out the advantages and disadvantages and limitations of various methods. according to data analysis, land-use change in Beijingland the reasons For future land development and utilization of analytical basis.

Land Use, Residential Density, and Walking: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

The neighborhood environment may play a role in encouraging sedentary patterns, especially for middle-aged and older adults. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between walking and neighborhood population density, retail availability, and land-use distribution using data from a cohort of adults aged 45 to 84 years. Data from a multi-ethnic sample of 5529 adult residents of Baltimore MD, Chicago IL, Forsyth County NC, Los Angeles CA, New York NY, and St. Paul MN enrolled in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis in 2000-2002 were linked to secondary land-use and population data. Participant reports of access to destinations and stores and objective measures of the percentage of land area in parcels devoted to retail land uses, the population divided by land area in parcels, and the mixture of uses for areas within 200 m of each participant's residence were examined. Multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate associations of self-reported and objective neighborhood characteristics with walking. All analyses were conducted in 2008 and 2009. After adjustment for individual-level characteristics and neighborhood connectivity, it was found that higher density, greater land area devoted to retail uses, and self-reported proximity of destinations and ease of walking to places were each related to walking. In models including all land-use measures, population density was positively associated with walking to places and with walking for exercise for more than 90 minutes/week, both relative to no walking. Availability of retail was associated with walking to places relative to not walking, and having a more proportional mix of land uses was associated with walking for exercise for more than 90 minutes/week, while self-reported ease of access to places was related to higher levels of exercise walking, both relative to not walking. Residential density and the presence of retail uses are related to various walking behaviors. Efforts to increase walking may benefit from attention to the intensity and type of land development.

Applying Water Quality Modeling to Regulating Land Development in a Watershed

Achieving a balance between land development and environmental protection has always been a challenge for many policy makers around world. The purpose of our project is to build a management system for protected drinking water source watersheds where land development is restricted for reasons of water health and drinking safety. Ideally under this proposed management system, land development is not considered taboo, but can proceed with preconditions. We first divided a protected area into two protection zones for different types of regulations. In the first zone, any type of land development is strictly prohibited, as the currently dominant philosophy for watershed protection. In the second zone, development is allowed but only when a permit with more environmental protection requirements is granted by a responsible governmental agency. In response to land development regulations, we proposed three compensation programs to the landowners of the protected watersheds to reduce their resistance on the inclusion of their properties into the designated protected areas. How to delineate and divide a protected area for different levels of regulation is thus a concern of all parties involved in management and compensation programs. In this paper, we demonstrate a case study on the Kao-Ping River Watershed, a subtropical watershed with highly heterogeneous land uses and a wide range of elevations in southern Taiwan. Through this study, we empirically examined the feasibility of the proposed management and compensation schemes. The targeted water pollution abatement goals were regarded as the basis of determining the area requirements for these two types of protection zones. Under this principle, the Arc/View GIS software and two water quality prediction models, QUAL2E and GWLF, were repeatedly applied to simulate the effects of water pollution reduction with different acreage of development-restricted areas. The optimal areas of the protected zones from the modeling results were further used to estimate the amounts of compensation fees based on the three following mechanisms: land banking, conservation easement, and transferable development rights.

Risk informed decision making in land use planning

The objective of the paper is to present a multicriteria decision methodology for supporting decisions about patterns of land development in the vicinity of major hazard installations. The proposed methodology is based on the paradigm of Multicriteria Decision Analysis and aims at integrating the results of risk analysis of major hazard installations with models for land use planning. The methodology possesses two main features: it is interactive and it does not require assessment of value tradeoffs prior to assessing the most preferred land use pattern. The latter is achieved by determining the efficient set of land use patterns by means of a dynamic programming-based algorithm. The proposed methodology and the use of the efficient set of solutions in supporting land use planning decisions are demonstrated through an application. Four criteria are used in the application, three referring to risk and one to the benefits of alternative land use patterns, although the methodology can accept any number of decision criteria as well as various types of land development. A computerized decision support system has been developed to implement the proposed methodology.

Natural links: naturalistic golf courses as wildlife habitat

Worldwide, there are over 25,000 golf courses. In the United States, there are approximately 15,000, with developers building about 350 new courses each year. Japan, Taiwan, China, and other countries are experiencing a similar golf boom. Some developers regard golf course development as one of the fastest growing types of land development in the world. Typically considered by ecologists to be an environmental problem, scientists are now reexamining golf courses to assess their potential to be wildlife habitat. Can naturalistic courses (those with substantial amounts of native wildlife habitat) actually benefit wildlife populations, especially birds, and still be attractive to golfers? My ecological research with a well-known naturalized links-style golf course in Kansas suggests that a naturalistic golf course can support significant numbers of birds, including many threatened species. When compared to a nearby natural area, the golf course equaled the natural area in total bird species richness but not in the relative abundance of specific kinds of birds. Naturalistic golf courses, while not natural areas, can complement biological reserves, military reservations, greenbelts, parks, farms, backyards and other units of the regional habitat mosaic. The large amount of habitat on naturalistic courses also reduces water runoff, irrigation, and chemical inputs. Furthermore, raising the profile of naturally landscaped golf courses can engage thousands of additional people in wildlife habitat preservation issues. Naturalistic courses are growing in popularity and the golfing community is responsive to aesthetic and environmental concerns. With the involvement of ecologists, this burgeoning interest in natural habitats on golf courses may significantly increase the amount of wildlife habitat, especially if designers build these kinds of courses in urban areas and on degraded landscapes such as landfills, quarries, and eroded lands.

Land development in the vicinity of hazardous facilities: a compromise assignment procedure

A procedure based on the assignment problem formulation and the paradigm of compromise programming is presented to aid in the determination of ‘compromise assignments’ of land-development types to parcels of land in the vicinity of hazardous facilities, which minimize risk to human health while maximizing land-development benefits. The basic procedure is described and illustrated with a hypothetical example, special cases and treatment of goal trade-offs are discussed, and a case-study application of the procedure is presented. The proposed approach provides a simple land-development decision aid tool which addresses the question of trade-offs between risk and development benefits; it can accommodate other decision criteria as well as alternative preference structures of the decisionmakers; and it applies to similar multiple-criteria decision problems.