Land Cover and Topography Affect the Land Transformation Caused by Wind Facilities

Long-term land changes are cumulatively a major driver of global environmental change. Historical land-cover/use change is important for assessing present landscape conditions and researching ecological environment issues, especially in eco-fragile areas. Arable land is one of the land types influenced by human agricultural activity, reflecting human effects on land-use and land-cover change. This paper selected Zhenlai County, which is part of the farming–pastoral zone of northern China, as the research region. As agricultural land transformation goes with the establishment of settlements, in this research, the historical progress of land transformation in agricultural areas was analyzed from the perspective of settlement evolution, and the historical reconstruction of arable land was established using settlement as the proxy between their inner relationships, which could be reflected by the farming radius. The results show the following. (1) There was little land transformation from nonagricultural areas into agricultural areas until the Qing government lifted the ban on cultivation and mass migration accelerated the process, which was most significant during 1907–1912; (2) The overall trend of land transformation in this region is from northeast to southwest; (3) Taking the topographic maps as references, the spatial distribution of the reconstructed arable land accounts for 47.79% of the maps. When this proxy-based reconstruction method is applied to other regions, its limitations should be noticed. It is important to explore the research of farming radius calculations based on regional characteristics. To achieve land-system sustainability, long-term historical land change trajectories and characteristics should be applied to future policy making.

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Expansion of oil palm and other cash crops causes an increase of the land surface temperature in the Jambi province in Indonesia

Biogeosciences ◽

10.5194/bg-14-4619-2017 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (20) ◽

pp. 4619-4635 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Clifton R. Sabajo ◽

Guerric le Maire ◽

Tania June ◽

Ana Meijide ◽

Olivier Roupsard ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Surface Temperature ◽

Land Surface Temperature ◽

Oil Palm ◽

Land Surface ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Transformation ◽

Clear Cut ◽

The Past ◽

Cash Crops

Abstract. Indonesia is currently one of the regions with the highest transformation rate of land surface worldwide related to the expansion of oil palm plantations and other cash crops replacing forests on large scales. Land cover changes, which modify land surface properties, have a direct effect on the land surface temperature (LST), a key driver for many ecological functions. Despite the large historic land transformation in Indonesia toward oil palm and other cash crops and governmental plans for future expansion, this is the first study so far to quantify the impacts of land transformation on the LST in Indonesia. We analyze LST from the thermal band of a Landsat image and produce a high-resolution surface temperature map (30 m) for the lowlands of the Jambi province in Sumatra (Indonesia), a region which suffered large land transformation towards oil palm and other cash crops over the past decades. The comparison of LST, albedo, normalized differenced vegetation index (NDVI) and evapotranspiration (ET) between seven different land cover types (forest, urban areas, clear-cut land, young and mature oil palm plantations, acacia and rubber plantations) shows that forests have lower surface temperatures than the other land cover types, indicating a local warming effect after forest conversion. LST differences were up to 10.1 ± 2.6 °C (mean ± SD) between forest and clear-cut land. The differences in surface temperatures are explained by an evaporative cooling effect, which offsets the albedo warming effect. Our analysis of the LST trend of the past 16 years based on MODIS data shows that the average daytime surface temperature in the Jambi province increased by 1.05 °C, which followed the trend of observed land cover changes and exceeded the effects of climate warming. This study provides evidence that the expansion of oil palm plantations and other cash crops leads to changes in biophysical variables, warming the land surface and thus enhancing the increase of the air temperature because of climate change.

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Land Cover and Topography Affect the Land Transformation Caused by Wind Facilities

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0088914 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. e88914 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Jay E. Diffendorfer ◽

Roger W. Compton

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Land Transformation

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Expansion of oil palm and other cash crops causes an increase of land surface temperature in Indonesia

10.5194/bg-2017-203 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Clifton R. Sabajo ◽

Guerric le Maire ◽

Tania June ◽

Ana Meijide ◽

Olivier Roupsard ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Surface Temperature ◽

Land Surface Temperature ◽

Oil Palm ◽

Land Surface ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Transformation ◽

Clear Cut ◽

The Past ◽

Cash Crops

Abstract. Indonesia is currently one of the regions with the highest transformation rate of the land surface worldwide due to the expansion of oil palm plantations and other cash crops replacing forests on large scales. Land cover changes, which modify land surface properties, have a direct effect on the land surface temperature (LST), a key driver for many ecological functions. Despite the large historic land transformation in Indonesia toward oil palm and other cash crops and governmental plans for future expansion, this is the first study so far to quantify the impact of land transformation in Indonesia on LST. We analyse LST from the thermal band of a Landsat image and produce a high resolution surface temperature map (30 m) for the lowlands of the Jambi province on Sumatra (Indonesia), a region of large land transformation towards oil palm and other cash crops over the past decades. We compare LST, albedo, Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI), and evapotranspiration (ET) of seven different land cover types (forest, urban areas, clear cut land, young and mature oil palm plantations, acacia and rubber plantations) and show that forests have lower surface temperatures than these land cover types indicating a local warming effect after forest conversion with LST differences up to 10.09 ± 2.6 ºC (mean ± SD) between forest and clear cut land. The differences in surface temperatures are explained by an evaporative cooling effect offsetting an albedo warming effect. Our analysis of the LST trend of the past 16 years based on MODIS data shows that the average daytime surface temperature of the Jambi province increased by 1.05 ºC, which followed the trend of observed land cover changes and exceed the effects of climate warming. Our study provides evidence that the expansion of oil palm plantations and other cash crops leads to changes in biophysical variables, warming the land surface and thus enhancing the increase in air temperature due to climate change.

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