Spatial Patterns and Spatial Modeling of Primary Organic Aerosol Concentrations in Three North American Cities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Provat Saha ◽  
Ellis Robinson ◽  
Wenwen Zhang ◽  
Steven Hankey ◽  
Allen Robinson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
North American ◽  
External Validation ◽  
Organic Aerosol ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Land Use ◽  
Spatially Resolved ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Develop Land ◽  
American Cities

<p>We measure highly spatially resolved primary organic aerosol (POA) concentrations in three North American cities (Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore) using an aerosol mass spectrometer deployed on a mobile laboratory. We conduct between 10 and 20 days of repeated mobile sampling in each city, covering a wide range of urban land use attributes. We derive two POA factors using positive matrix factorization of the measured organic mass spectra: cooking OA (COA) and traffic-related OA (hydrocarbon-like OA; HOA). Both the COA and HOA concentrations vary substantially within and between cities. The COA and HOA concentrations in Oakland are about a factor of 2-4 higher than Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Within a city, the concentrations vary by a factor of 2-5. The COA concentrations are higher than the HOA in each city, indicating that cooking is an important POA source in the US. In each city, the concentrations are higher in the downtown and near large sources, showing the linkage between land-use activities and POA concentrations. We develop land-use regression (LUR) models for COA and HOA using the measured concentrations and available land-use covariates. We find that a similar set of land-use covariates explain the variability of measured POA in each city. The LUR models are moderately transferable between sampling cities. An external validation effort using literature data shows that our models predict the previous point measurements in six North American cities reasonably well. We are applying our LUR models for a national prediction of the concentration surfaces of COA and HOA. We plan to apply the national estimates for the epidemiologic and environmental justice analysis of POA in the United States.</p>

scholarly journals Core Rhizosphere Microbiomes of Dryland Wheat Are Influenced by Location and Land Use History

2019 ◽  
Vol 86 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Schlatter ◽  
Chuntao Yin ◽  
Scot Hulbert ◽  
Timothy C. Paulitz
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
The United States ◽  
Plant Health ◽  
Fungal Communities ◽  
Land Use History ◽  
Wheat Roots ◽  
Core Microbiome ◽  
Cross Domain ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range

ABSTRACT The Inland Pacific Northwest is one of the most productive dryland wheat production areas in the United States. We explored the bacterial and fungal communities associated with wheat in a controlled greenhouse experiment using soils from multiple locations to identify core taxa consistently associated with wheat roots and how land use history influences wheat-associated communities. Further, we examined microbial co-occurrence networks from wheat rhizospheres to identify candidate hub taxa. Location of origin and land use history (long-term no-till versus noncropped Conservation Reserve Program [CRP]) of soils were the strongest drivers of bacterial and fungal communities. Wheat rhizospheres were especially enriched in many bacterial families, while only a few fungal taxa were enriched in the rhizosphere. There was a core set of bacteria and fungi that was found in >95% of rhizosphere or bulk soil samples, including members of Bradyrhizobium, Sphingomonadaceae, Massilia, Variovorax, Oxalobacteraceae, and Caulobacteraceae. Core fungal taxa in the rhizosphere included Nectriaceae, Ulocladium, Alternaria, Mortierella, and Microdochium. Overall, there were fewer core fungal taxa, and the rhizosphere effect was not as pronounced as with bacteria. Cross-domain co-occurrence networks were used to identify hub taxa in the wheat rhizosphere, which included bacterial and fungal taxa (e.g., Sphingomonas, Massilia, Knufia, and Microdochium). Our results suggest that there is a relatively small group of core rhizosphere bacteria that were highly abundant on wheat roots regardless of soil origin and land use history. These core communities may play important roles in nutrient uptake, suppressing fungal pathogens, and other plant health functions. IMPORTANCE Plant-associated microbiomes are critical for plant health and other important agroecosystem processes. We assessed the bacterial and fungal microbiomes of wheat grown in soils from across a dryland wheat cropping systems in eastern Washington to identify the core microbiome on wheat roots that is consistent across soils from different locations and land use histories. Moreover, cross-domain co-occurrence network analysis identified core and hub taxa that may play important roles in microbial community assembly. Candidate core and hub taxa provide a starting point for targeting microbiome components likely to be critical to plant health and for constructing synthetic microbial communities for further experimentation. This work is one of the first examples of identifying a core microbiome on a major field crop grown across hundreds of square kilometers over a wide range of biogeographical zones.

scholarly journals A New Approach to High-Resolution Urban Land Use Classification Using Open Access Software and True Color Satellite Images

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 5266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Chapa ◽  
Srividya Hariharan ◽  
Jochen Hack
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Urban Land Use ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
True Color ◽  
Land Cover Maps

Urbanization nowadays results in the most dynamic and drastic changes in land use/land cover, with a significant impact on the environment. A detailed analysis and assessment of this process is necessary to take informed actions to reduce its impact on the environment and human well-being. In most parts of the world, detailed information on the composition, structure, extent, and temporal changes of urban areas is lacking. The purpose of this study is to present a methodology to produce high-resolution land use/land cover maps by the use of free software and satellite imagery. These maps can help to understand dynamic urbanizations processes to plan, design, and coordinate sustainable urban development plans, especially in areas with limited resources and advancing environmental degradation. A series of high-resolution true color images provided by Google Earth Pro were used to do initial classifications with the Semi-Automatic Classification Plug-in in QGIS. Afterwards, a new methodology to improve the classification by the elimination of shadows and clouds, and a reduction of misclassifications through superimposition was applied. The classification was carried out for three urban areas in León, Nicaragua, with different degrees of urbanization for the years 2009, 2015, and 2018. Finally, the accuracy of the classification was analyzed using randomly defined validation polygons. The results are three sets of high-resolution land use/land cover maps of the initial and the improved classification, showing the detailed structures and temporal dynamics of urbanization. The average accuracy of classification reaches 74%, but up to 85% for the best classification. The results clearly identify advancing urbanization, the loss of vegetation and riparian zones, and threats to urban ecosystems. In general, the level of detail and simplicity of our methodology is a valuable tool to support sustainable urban management, although its application is not limited to these areas and can also be employed to track changes over time, providing therefore, relevant information to a wide range of decision-makers.

scholarly journals Rates, trends, causes, and consequences of urban land-use change in the United States

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Acevedo ◽  
Janis L. Taylor ◽  
Dave J. Hester ◽  
Carol S. Mladinich ◽  
Sonya Glavac
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Land ◽  
Urban Land Use ◽  
Urban Land Use Change

scholarly journals Sand Castles Before the Tide? Affordable Housing in Expensive Cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rent Control ◽  
Planning Decisions ◽  
Housing Costs ◽  
The Face ◽  
Land Use Policies ◽  
American Cities

This article focuses on cities with unprecedented economic success and a seemingly permanent crisis of affordable housing. In the expensive cities, policymakers expend great amounts of energy trying to bring down housing costs with subsidies for affordable housing and sometimes with rent control. But these efforts are undermined by planning decisions that make housing for most people vastly more expensive than it has to be by restricting the supply of new units even in the face of growing demand. I begin by describing current housing policy in the expensive metro areas of the United States. I then show how this combination of policies affecting housing, despite internal contradictions, makes sense from the perspective of the political coalitions that can form in a setting of fragmented local jurisdictions, local control over land use policies, and homeowner control over local government. Finally, I propose some more effective approaches to housing policy. My view is that the effects of the formal affordable housing policies of expensive cities are quite small in their impact when compared to the size of the problem—like sand castles before the tide. I will argue that we can do more, potentially much more, to create subsidized affordable housing in high-cost American cities. But more fundamentally, we will need to rethink the broader set of exclusionary land use policies that are the primary reason that housing in these cities has become so expensive. We cannot solve the problem unless we fix the housing market itself.

scholarly journals LEADING NORTH AMERICAN METHODS OF RESEARCH ON CHARACTERS AS OBJECTS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (ON THE BASIS OF MATERIALS OF USA FORENSIC EXPERTS)

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 512-518
Author(s):  
I. O. Struk ◽  
M. M. Kalinichenko
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Forensic Science ◽  
North American ◽  
Evaluation Criteria ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Objective Evaluation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analytical Tools

Characters as a component of visual and audiovisual (as well as literary) works are among the objects of intellectual property and are subject to legal protection. The task of a forensic expert is to empirically determine the characters independence level according to objective evaluation criteria that are not presented in corresponding official methods. In the present article the history of the creation and specific features of leading scientific and methodical means and research practices of characters examination as objects of copyright which became significant spread in the modern analytical practice of North American specialists in the forensic science are briefly reviewed. Thanks to efforts of leading North American forensic science in the field of characters protection as objects of intellectual property, several professional methods have been developed and tested at the same time over past few decades and are actively used in court practice. General review of two main methodological tools that are used most often is presented in this article that purpose and task is to generalize and critically analyze the main scientific and methodological concepts of North American forensic experts which are applied in the process of studying the facts of characters use as objects of copyright. Main scientific methodological "tests" used by of the United States forensic experts ("test for a sufficient level of creative expressiveness" and "test of characters embodying essential features of the work") are considered. While general research on examined methodological materials, productive analytical tools were detailed that are worthy of being included in the arsenal of modern Ukrainian forensic science. However, their effective practical application by domestic forensic experts requires a careful critical attitude, appropriate approbation, application of a wide range of research and methodological approaches.

scholarly journals Estimating infiltration increase and runoff reduction due to green infrastructure

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Zhang ◽  
Richard C. Peralta
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Urban Land Use ◽  
Aquifer Recharge ◽  
Runoff Reduction ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Southwestern Usa ◽  
Lake City

Abstract To aid urban entities desiring to reduce runoff from precipitation while increasing aquifer recharge, we present an approach for simultaneously quantifying runoff and infiltration. Developing the approach involved using: (1) the Windows version of the Source Loading and Management Model (WINSLAMM) to estimate runoff from precipitation in areas with green infrastructure (GI); and (2) the SCS runoff curve method to estimate infiltration. Computed infiltration and runoff values enable the estimation of the runoff reduction and infiltration increase due to alternative GI construction modes. We relate infiltration ratios to land use for a range of event rainfall depths in southwestern USA. These ratios can aid estimation of aquifer recharge while improving storm water management. We apply the approach to a Salt Lake City residential area for current land use and three assumed runoff control practices. Although currently applicable for a wide range of precipitation and urban land use situations in southwestern USA, the approach is extensible to guide urban development elsewhere.

Classification of Bicycle Traffic Patterns in Five North American Cities

2013 ◽  
Vol 2339 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis F. Miranda-Moreno ◽  
Thomas Nosal ◽  
Robert J. Schneider ◽  
Frank Proulx
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
North American ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
The United States ◽  
Traffic Patterns ◽  
Day Of The Week ◽  
Volume Characteristics ◽  
American Cities

This study used a unique database of long-term bicycle counts from 38 locations in five North American cities and along the Route Verte in Quebec, Canada, to analyze bicycle ridership patterns. The cities in the study were Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada and Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California, in the United States. Count data showed that the bicycle volume patterns at each location could be classified as utilitarian, mixed utilitarian, mixed recreational, and recreational. Study locations classified by these categories were found to have consistent hourly and weekly traffic patterns across cities, despite considerable differences between the cities in their weather, size, and urban form. Seasonal patterns across the four categories and in the cities also were identified. Expansion factors for each classification are presented by hour and day of the week. Monthly expansion factors are presented for each city. Finally, traffic volume characteristics are presented for comparison purposes.

scholarly journals Fat and Fried: Linking Land Use Law, The Risks of Obesity, and Climate Change

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Tarlock
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Disaster Relief ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Land Use Regulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Law

Among the major immediate risks faced by the United States are the increasing rate of obesity of its population and a wide range of potential adverse climate change impacts such as the rising of sea levels, which could result in more extreme flooding and droughts. 2 This article draws from the growing interest in the law and policy of disaster response and risk response3 generated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Its focus is the use of law to induce the adaptation of societal behavior to minimize the long-term costs of the two serious risks4 rather than on post-disaster relief. Specifically, this article examines how one set of policy instruments, land use planning and regulation, can help to minimize the costs of these inevitable risks. Obesity and global climate change are here, although their specific impacts are still hard to predict. The basic argument is that spatial planning may help mitigate the two risks and the costs associated with them, even though spatial planning and land use regulation are relatively limited policy instruments to deal with these maddeningly complex social and political problems for two primary reasons. First, the law faces structural barriers; in the main, land use law is designed to produce a “one-off” solution to mitigate a nuisance-like use rather than to produce long-term substantive results. Second, efforts to induce behavioral change challenge the deep-seated value of freedom to live where and how one wants as the quote from the director of disaster relief in Kansas indicates. Nonetheless, the effort is worth making as there are clear links between land use regulation and these two risks.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-268
Author(s):  
Brad Edmondson
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Agency ◽  
Adirondack Park ◽  
Environmental Laws ◽  
Statutory Authority ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive Areas ◽  
Develop Land

This chapter looks at the major environmental laws of the United States after the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan was signed into law. It also presents Senator Henry Jackson's National Land Use Policy Act in 1970. The act used incentives and sanctions to encourage states to develop land use plans for environmentally sensitive areas and large development sites. The chapter then highlights the Adirondack Park Agency's (APA) job to protect the wilderness character of a state park that was much larger than any of the national parks that existed in 1973. Many regional land use plans of the era depended on local governments taking voluntary incentives, but the Adirondack law gave a state agency statutory authority to protect environmental quality by reviewing and modifying zoning regulations. The chapter recounts the APA's three main goals: to prevent building in the park's backcountry, to make sure that development happened in places where it would not hurt the park's wild character, and to protect Adirondack shorelines. Ultimately, the chapter examines the emergence of threats to the ecological health of the Adirondacks that are beyond the park agency's power to control.

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