Spatial and temporal characterization of land-use in the Buffalo National River Watershed

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.D. SCOTT ◽  
T.H. UDOUJ

Today there is much concern about the potential contamination, overuse and development of scenic rivers in more or less pristine environments. The objective of this work was to quantify the spatial and temporal changes in land-use occurring in a watershed draining a nationally protected river. The Buffalo National River of Arkansas was chosen to serve as an example of how Geographic Information System (GIS) technology can rapidly assess the environmental changes that have occurred within a watershed. GIS was used to develop a spatial database of the watershed and to describe differences in land-use data from five sample years during 1965–92. Over this time span, approximately 40 000 ha of forest were lost and converted primarily to pasture. The average rate of loss of forest was 1480 ha/yr. During this same period, the average rate of gain of pasture was 1381 ha/yr. Buffer analyses showed that pasture increased at a higher percentage rate in the buffer zones surrounding the Buffalo River than in the tributaries of the Buffalo River, and a large proportion of the increase was on higher slopes. Land-use changes were dynamic with a greater area converted to pasture than area of pasture converted to forest in the watershed. The cleared forest lands were mostly near older pastures and along streams. The reforested lands tended to occur in the more isolated areas. The Buffalo River Watershed has undergone changes in land-use that may have had impact on the water quality of the region.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3473
Author(s):  
Yong Lai ◽  
Guangqing Huang ◽  
Shengzhong Chen ◽  
Shaotao Lin ◽  
Wenjun Lin ◽  
...  

Anthropogenic land-use change is one of the main drivers of global environmental change. China has been on a fast track of land-use change since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. In view of the situation, this study aims to optimize land use and provide a way to effectively coordinate the development and ecological protection in China. We took East Guangdong (EGD), an underdeveloped but populous region, as a case study. We used land-use changes indexes to demonstrate the land-use dynamics in EGD from 2000 to 2020, then identified the hot spots for fast-growing areas of built-up land and simulated land use in 2030 using the future land-use simulation (FLUS) model. The results indicated that the cropland and the built-up land changed in a large proportion during the study period. Then we established the ecological security pattern (ESP) according to the minimal cumulative resistance model (MCRM) based on the natural and socioeconomic factors. Corridors, buffer zones, and the key nodes were extracted by the MCRM to maintain landscape connectivity and key ecological processes of the study area. Moreover, the study showed the way to identify the conflict zones between future built-up land expansion with the corridors and buffer zones, which will be critical areas of consideration for future land-use management. Finally, some relevant policy recommendations are proposed based on the research result.


Author(s):  
Antonio Tomao ◽  
Barbara Ermini ◽  
Marcela Prokopov ◽  
Adriano Conte

Negative environmental changes generally addressed as ‘syndromes’ are evaluated in the context of Soil Degradation (SD) and interpreted by using a ‘Land-Use/Land Cover Changes’ (LULCCs) framework in order to disentangle ‘past trajectories’, ‘present patterns’, and ‘future changes’. This approach allows to discuss the potential impact on SD processes and it represents an informed basis for identifying measurable outcomes of SD. This study focuses on the case of Emilia Romagna, a region located in the North of Italy with high-value added agricultural productions. A multi-temporal analysis of land-use changes between 1954 and 2008 has been proposed, discussing the evolution of associated SD syndromes in Emilia Romagna. The contributing information have been used as a baseline for Sustainable Land Management (SLM) strategies. This framework of analysis provides useful tools to investigate and to monitor the effects of SD in the Mediterranean basin where several regions underwent common development patterns yelding global pathological symptoms of environmental degradation.


Author(s):  
Nkemdilim Maureen Ekpeni ◽  
Amidu Owolabi Ayeni

This chapter examines both concept of global hazard and disaster and its management in the lights of its vulnerability. It categorized the different types of hazards and disasters and their components. From the research findings, it is observed that hazards and disaster are two sides of a coin. They occur at the interface between human systems and natural events in our physical environments. This chapter highlights that the major environmental changes driving hazards and vulnerability to disasters are climate change, land-use changes, and degradation of natural resources. After presenting a typology of disasters and their magnitude globally, management of disaster has transited from just being a “response and relief”-centric approach to a mitigation and preparedness approach.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasa Ravbar ◽  
Gregor Kovačič ◽  
Metka Petrič

<p>Environmental changes, such as alterations in precipitation and evapotranspiration regimes, changes in vegetation type, etc. are triggering direct impact on hydrological cycle through modified amounts and patterns of recharge conditions, as well as occurrence of more frequent and severe hydrometeorological events. Karst aquifers are particularly vulnerable to these effects due to highly dynamic hydrological processes. In this study, we were interested in studying the possibilities to observe changed hydrological behaviour of karst springs on a human timescale. Therefore, we focused on two examples in Slovenia, both regionally important for freshwater supply, agriculture and hydropower. The Unica spring mostly drains areas under moderate continental climate. Its catchment has been repeatedly and severely hit by natural disasters (e.g., ice break, bark beetle attack, windthrow) after 2014 causing large-scale forest disturbances. The catchment of Rižana spring, on the other hand, belongs to the moderate Submediterranean climate. There these types of disturbance did not occur in recent years (excluding some wildfires), but the catchment has been liable to substantial land use changes in the past six decades. For assessment of vegetation cover changes and large-scale disturbances in forests, historical digital orthophotos of the Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia since 1957 have been compared with the recent land use data provided by Ministry of Agriculture, Economy and Food and forest state database of Slovenian Forest Service. At the same time, hydrological data of the Unica (Hasberg gauging station) in the period 1962-2018 and Rižana springs (Kubed gauging station) in the period 1966-2018 and precipitation data from Postojna (period 1962-2018) and Podgrad (period 1966-2018) meteorological stations have been processed. Individual flood pulse events over the 57 years for Unica and 53 years for Rižana have been separated. For each flood pulse various information about precipitation amount and intensity, duration of discharge increase, its intensity and amplitude have been specified. We compared these findings with the calculated trends of meteorological and hydrological variables and also changes in land use. The impact of particular environmental change on discharge values of both springs has been evaluated, showing that both, climate and land-use changes, have considerable impact on hydrological regime of studied karst springs. In particular, altered duration of flood pulses increase, their amplitude and intensity have been observed, meaning that the most important issues of water availability that are crucial for water-dependant economic sectors are under threat.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 747 ◽  
pp. 306-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norizawati Mohd Ayob ◽  
Norhasimah Ismail ◽  
Tarmiji Masron

Land use changes are a key driver in global environmental changes and had a significant impact on the climate at all scales. Various human activities that took place thousands of years ago have an impact on the earth's surface. Today, with the limited supply and high demand, land use crisis became a big issue for the most countries. Changes in land use are not actually only providing a history of the area, but it also describes the way of life of its local communities. In the interdisciplinary research for land use study, cultural values, knowledge and perceptions of knowledge has been recognized as a major factor in determining the adopted approach applied in land use management in that area. Therefore, this paper tries to evaluate the role and potential of the integration of TLEK and GIS in mapping the series of changes in land use.Keyword: Local knowledge, TLEK, land use mapping & conceptual framework


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athos Agapiou ◽  
Dimitrios D. Alexakis ◽  
Apostolos Sarris ◽  
Kyriacos Themistocleous ◽  
Christiana Papoutsa ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 5431-5437

The economic growth of any country crucially depends on the mining activity of that country. The mining activities require huge land for the extraction of mineral from the earth. The recent government policy imposing the systematic mapping of the land use and land cover in and around the mines. In the present study, work, the analysis of land used and land covered was carried out at Malkapur limestone mines. This study discussed the brief mapping of the buffer zones buffer zones areas in by using digital image processing techniques. This research work demonstrated the changes happened in and around mines for the buffer radius of 1 km, 5 km and 10 km. In this study it was found that there were no significant changes observed in land use which intern implies that mining activities are not having any impact in land use changes. Further, in this study, not much variation was reported against the forest land and water bodies situated in and around the mines


Author(s):  
Angela Rosa Piergiovanni ◽  
Benedetta Margiotta

Apulia (southeast of Italy) has always been an agricultural region in the Italian landscape. Nowadays, the countryside is a mix of natural environments and artificial landscapes. From 2014 to 2016, the region has been the object of a project aimed to collect information about geographic position and surface devoted to legume and/or cereal landrace cultivation. The collection missions carried out allowed the acquisition of 352 samples belonging to eight legumes and six cereal species. Chickpeas predominated among legumes, while durum and common wheat landraces prevailed among cereals. The cultivation of these landraces was mainly located in the marginal areas of central and southern Apulia region. The GIS technology, used in order to geo-reference the collection sites, allowed investigating the changes in land cover/land use (LCLU) occurred over the last three decades at each collecting site. In addition to the evidences collected at field level, the comparison of old ortho-photos and recent satellite images, available on Copernicus Land Monitoring Service of European Environment Agency, shown that very limited changes of LCLU have occurred. Near the collection sites, the agrarian landscape is remained highly fragmented as it was three decades ago. The cultivation side by side of irregular patches with legumes, cereals, olive trees, and grapevine characterize the agricultural landscape. Based on these evidences it can be infer that the absence of significant changes in LCLU has play a positive role in the safeguard of on farm conservation of Apulian landraces.


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