scholarly journals An Agent-Based Reasoning of Impacts of Regional Climate Changes on Land Use Changes in the Three-River Headwaters Region of China

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Zhang ◽  
Jinyan Zhan ◽  
Juan Huang ◽  
Rui Yu ◽  
Chenchen Shi

The land surface in Three-River Headwaters Region (TRHR), a typical ecological fragile zone of China, is quite sensitive to the climate changes which will destabilize certain ecosystem services valuable to the entire nation and neighboring countries. This study aimed to analyze the impacts of climate changes and agents’ adaptive behaviors on the regional land use changes with the agent based model (ABM). First, the main agents were extracted according to the production resources endowments and socioeconomic background. Then the agents’ land use behaviors were analyzed and parameterized. Thereafter, the ABM model was built to simulate the impacts of the climate changes on the regional land use changes and agents’ economic benefits. The results showed that the land use changes were mainly characterized by the increase of grassland and decrease of unused land area. Besides, the agents would get more wealth under the scenario without climate changes in the long term, even though the total income is lower than that under the scenario with climate changes. In addition, the sensitivity analysis indicated that the model is sensitive to the climatic conditions, market price of agricultural and animal husbandry products, government subsidies, and cost control.

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Fernando Allende Álvarez ◽  
Gillian Gómez-Mediavilla ◽  
Nieves López-Estébanez ◽  
Pedro Molina Holgado ◽  
Judith Ares Barajas

The present paper highlights the importance of hedgerows and enclosures in the mountains of Central Spain. Now, these landscapes have suffered profound variations in terms of agroforestry practices, especially in the Mediterranean mountains where the characteristic multifunctional has largely been lost. The article analyzes land uses changes, dynamics, and their morphological features between the first half of the 20th Century (1956) and the second decade of the present time (2019). The paper was divided into three sections. First, the identification of land uses using orthophotograph and aerial photograph; after that the info was checked with fieldwork. Eleven categories were identified according to the dominant use and land use changes and size of land parcels were taken into consideration. Second, the configuration and the information collected through the type and intensity of change in land uses made it possible to recognise and quantify their distribution and trend between these two dates. Also, the kernel density algorithm available in the Arcgis 10.5 software was used to obtain density and changes in land parcels. Finally, an overview is given of the main role that this agroforestry plays due to the social, ecological, and economic benefits that they provide for allowing sustainable development.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1240
Author(s):  
Ming-Yun Chu ◽  
Wan-Yu Liu

As compared with conventional approaches for reducing carbon emissions, the strategies of reducing emissions from deforestations and forest degradation (REDD) can greatly reduce costs. Hence, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change regards the REDD strategies as a crucial approach to mitigate climate change. To respond to climate change, Taiwan passed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act to control the emissions of greenhouse gases. In 2021, the Taiwan government has announced that it will achieve the carbon neutrality target by 2050. Accordingly, starting with focusing on the carbon sink, the REDD strategies have been considered a recognized and feasible strategy in Taiwan. This study analyzed the net present value and carbon storage for various land-use types to estimate the carbon stock and opportunity cost of land-use changes. When the change of agricultural land to artificial forests generated carbon stock, the opportunity cost of carbon stock was negative. Contrarily, restoring artificial forests (which refer to a kind of forest that is formed through artificial planting, cultivation, and conservation) to agricultural land would generate carbon emissions, but create additional income. Since the opportunity cost of carbon storage needs to be lower than the carbon market price so that landlords have incentives to conduct REDD+, the outcomes of this study can provide a reference for the government to set an appropriate subsidy or price for carbon sinks. It is suggested that the government should offer sufficient incentives to reforest collapsed land, and implement interventions, promote carbon trading policies, or regulate the development of agricultural land so as to maintain artificial broadleaf forests for increased carbon storage.


Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Lestrelin ◽  
Jean-Christophe Castella ◽  
Qiaohong Li ◽  
Thoumthone Vongvisouk ◽  
Nguyen Dinh Tien ◽  
...  

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is viewed as an effective way to mitigate climate change by compensating stewards of forested areas for minimizing forestland conversion and protecting forest services. Opportunity costs assess the cost of foregone opportunity when preserving the forest instead of investing in an alternative activity or resource use. This paper questions the calculation method of opportunity costs using averaged economic benefits and co-benefits of different land-use transitions. We propose a nested approach to land-use transitions at the interface between landscapes and livelihoods and assessing a wide range of potential socio-ecological costs and benefits. Combining household surveys and focus groups with participatory mapping, we applied the approach in villages of Laos, Vietnam and China positioned along a broad transition trajectory from subsistence shifting cultivation to intensive commercial agriculture. By looking beyond the economics of land use, we highlight important linkages between land-use changes and livelihood differentiation, vulnerability and inequalities. Our results show the importance of addressing the impacts of land-use transitions on a wide range of potential ecological and socioeconomic costs and benefits at multiple levels.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Yan ◽  
Yanpeng Cai ◽  
Chunhui Li ◽  
Xuan Wang ◽  
Qiang Liu

This study researched the individual and combined impacts of future LULC and climate changes on water balance in the upper reaches of the Beiluo River basin on the Loess Plateau of China, using the scenarios of RCP4.5 and 8.5 of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The climate data indicated that both precipitation and temperature increased at seasonal and annual scales from 2020 to 2050 under RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The future land use changes were predicted through the CA-Markov model. The land use predictions of 2025, 2035, and 2045 indicated rising forest areas with decreased agricultural land and grassland. In this study, three scenarios including only LULC change, only climate change, and combined climate and LULC change were established. The SWAT model was calibrated, validated, and used to simulate the water balance under the three scenarios. The results showed that increased rainfall and temperature may lead to increased runoff, water yield, and ET in spring, summer, and autumn and to decreased runoff, water yield, and ET in winter from 2020 to 2050. However, LULC change, compared with climate change, may have a smaller impact on the water balance. On an annual scale, runoff and water yield may gradually decrease, but ET may increase. The combined effects of both LULC and climate changes on water balance in the future were similar to the variation trend of climate changes alone at both annual and seasonal scales. The results obtained in this study provide further insight into the availability of future streamflow and can aid in water resource management planning in the study area.


Solid Earth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 1551-1564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sajad Zareie ◽  
Hassan Khosravi ◽  
Abouzar Nasiri ◽  
Mostafa Dastorani

Abstract. Land surface temperature (LST) is one of the key parameters in the physics of land surface processes from local to global scales, and it is one of the indicators of environmental quality. Evaluation of the surface temperature distribution and its relation to existing land use types are very important to the investigation of the urban microclimate. In arid and semi-arid regions, understanding the role of land use changes in the formation of urban heat islands is necessary for urban planning to control or reduce surface temperature. The internal factors and environmental conditions of Yazd city have important roles in the formation of special thermal conditions in Iran. In this paper, we used the temperature–emissivity separation (TES) algorithm for LST retrieving from the TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor) data of the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM). The root mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2) were used for validation of retrieved LST values. The RMSE of 0.9 and 0.87 °C and R2 of 0.98 and 0.99 were obtained for the 1998 and 2009 images, respectively. Land use types for the city of Yazd were identified and relationships between land use types, land surface temperature and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) were analyzed. The Kappa coefficient and overall accuracy were calculated for accuracy assessment of land use classification. The Kappa coefficient values are 0.96 and 0.95 and the overall accuracy values are 0.97 and 0.95 for the 1998 and 2009 classified images, respectively. The results showed an increase of 1.45 °C in the average surface temperature. The results of this study showed that optical and thermal remote sensing methodologies can be used to research urban environmental parameters. Finally, it was found that special thermal conditions in Yazd were formed by land use changes. Increasing the area of asphalt roads, residential, commercial and industrial land use types and decreasing the area of the parks, green spaces and fallow lands in Yazd caused a rise in surface temperature during the 11-year period.


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