Analysis of spatiotemporal patterns and driving forces for land degradation and restoration in Mongolia from 1990 to 2015

Author(s):  
Juanle Wang ◽  
Haishuo Wei ◽  
Jinyi Yao ◽  
Yating Shao ◽  
Xiya Liang ◽  
...  

<p>      Land degradation is an important ecological and environmental problem facing the world. “Land Degradation Neutrality” is one of the core indicators in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. However, achieving this is a serious challenge in Mongolia where land degradation continues. The increasingly serious land degradation in Mongolia has had a direct impact on the ecology of the entire Mongolian plateau and adjacent regions. Land degradation and restoration in this region fluctuate spatially and temporally because of the impacts of global climate change and human activity.</p><p>      We obtained land cover data for Mongolia for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2015 with a resolution of 30 m using the object-oriented remote sensing image interpretation method.Land cover types include forest, real steppe, meadow steppe, desert steppe, cropland, built area, water, sand, and barren land. Based on a spatial analysis module in a geographic information system, the multi-period land cover data were superimposed and calculated. We defined the land degradation cover types and restoration cover types in the processing. Thus, a serials of high-resolution distribution maps of land degradation and restoration for fixed monitoring time intervals were obtained for first time.</p><p>      We analyzed trends in land degradation and restoration and estimated the typical areas of each in Mongolia. We specifically analyzed the process of land cover change in these areas, comprehensively considered natural factors and human activities driving this change. Finally, we proposed targeted strategies to control the land degradation and promote land restoration in different regions in Mongolia.</p>

Solid Earth ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1071-1085 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Amuti ◽  
G. Luo

Abstract. The combined effects of drought, warming and the changes in land cover have caused severe land degradation for several decades in the extremely arid desert oases of southern Xinjiang, northwest China. Land cover classifications of Landsat images in 1990, 2000 and 2008 were performed based on the multistage supervised classification scheme using the maximum likelihood classifier integrated with conventional vegetation and soil indexes, which improved overall accuracies by 4–5% compared to the standard classification method. Based on the detection of changes in land cover during 1990–2008 using remote sensing (RS) and a geographic information system (GIS), it can be found that the oasis significantly (+35%) increased, while the area of ecotone decreased (−43%). The major trends of the land cover changes were the notable growth of the oasis and the reduction of the desert–oasis ecotone. These changes were mainly a result of the intensified human activities such as land and water exploitation as well as overgrazing. The results of this study indicate that the oasis environment will be deteriorated by increase in potential areas of land degradation if the trend of desert moving further inward and the shrinking of the ecotone continues over the next decades.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Grainger

<p>A goal of Land Degradation Neutrality by the year 2030 was agreed by the Rio+20 conference in 2012, and subsequently included in the Sustainable Development Goals. It dilutes earlier goals of unrestricted control of desertification, for example, by proposing that the rate of land degradation should be reduced and the rate of restoration of degraded land increased so they offset each other by 2030. As with many environmental concepts that have emerged in recent decades, Land Degradation Neutrality was proposed in the political arena, and scientific study is only now starting to evolve. Yet distinct positions are already forming within the scientific community, for example, on the feasibility of monitoring land degradation neutrality in dry areas when there are no reliable estimates for the rate of desertification, and on what constitutes land restoration in dry areas. Land degradation neutrality is also yet to be put in the wider context of environmental degradation as a whole, e.g. how does it relate to the forest degradation component of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and to degradation of biodiversity which the Convention on Biological Diversity is seeking to reduce. This session will allow scientists working in the field of land degradation neutrality to share their perspectives in this emerging field.</p>


Degradation currently affects 25 % of the land on Earth and 40 % of the agricultural land on Earth. Environmental effects of soil degradation are widespread, including increased soil losses, deterioration of water quality, decline of biodiversity and degradation of ecological resources and associated values, especially where actual land use is disrespectful (natural use in circumstances where land is in conflict with the environment. Changes in temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation patterns can affect the production of plant biomass, land use, land cover, soil moisture, infiltration rate, runoff and crop management, and eventually land degradation. In recent decades, powerful partnerships have been seen between global climate change and land loss processes. In order to reliably define or forecast the effect of climate change on the loss of land, models of climate change and land use models should be combined with hydrology. Until the first seventies land degradation and geological process weren't thought of a serious issue in most Mediterranean regions. Traditional agricultural systems were believed to be able to keep those processes under control. So low priority was appointed to research programmes and comes on eroding and conservation, preference being given to the impact of farm machinery on soil structure and compaction beside the role of organic matter within the soil. To regulate the destruction of soil, it is therefore important to have limited and global strategies and regulations. Land use and land cover changes influence carbon fluxes and GHGs emissions that directly alter atmospherical composition and radioactive forcing properties. Land degradation aggravates greenhouse gas-induced global climate change through the discharge of CO2 from cleared and dead vegetation and thru the reduction of the carbon sequestration potential of degraded land. The present analysis furnishes effects of climate amendment on land degradation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1907-1947
Author(s):  
T. Amuti ◽  
G. Luo

Abstract. The combined effects of drought, warming and the changes in land cover have caused severe land degradation for several decades in the extremely arid desert oases of Southern Xinjiang, Northwest China. This study examined land cover changes during 1990–2008 to characterize and quantify the transformations in the typical oasis of Hotan. Land cover classifications of these images were performed based on the supervised classification scheme integrated with conventional vegetation and soil indexes. Change-detection techniques in remote sensing (RS) and a geographic information system (GIS) were applied to quantify temporal and spatial dynamics of land cover changes. The overall accuracies, Kappa coefficients, and average annual increase rate or decrease rate of land cover classes were calculated to assess classification results and changing rate of land cover. The analysis revealed that major trends of the land cover changes were the notable growth of the oasis and the reduction of the desert–oasis ecotone, which led to accelerated soil salinization and plant deterioration within the oasis. These changes were mainly attributed to the intensified human activities. The results indicated that the newly created agricultural land along the margins of the Hotan oasis could result in more potential areas of land degradation. If no effective measures are taken against the deterioration of the oasis environment, soil erosion caused by land cover change may proceed. The trend of desert moving further inward and the shrinking of the ecotone may lead to potential risks to the eco-environment of the Hotan oasis over the next decades.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Wu ◽  
Jinyan Zhan ◽  
Haiming Yan ◽  
Chenchen Shi ◽  
Juan Huang

The land use and land cover change (LUCC) is one of the prime driving forces of climate change. Most attention has been paid to the influence of accuracy of the land cover data in numerous climate simulation projects. The accuracy of the temporal land use data from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is higher than 90%, but the high-precision land cover data is absent. We overlaid land cover maps from different sources, and the grids with consistent classification were selected as the sample grids. By comparing the results obtained with different decision tree classifiers with the WEKA toolkit for data mining, it was found that the C4.5 algorithm was more suitable for converting land use data of CAS classification to land cover data of IGBP classification. We reset the decision rules with Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as the indicators. The accuracy of the reclassified land cover data was proven to reach 83.14% through comparing with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Sites and high resolution images. Therefore, it is feasible to produce the temporal land cover data with this method, which can be used as the parameters of dynamical downscaling in the regional climate simulation.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 798
Author(s):  
Thi-Thu Vu ◽  
Yuan Shen

Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change analyses are useful in understanding the changes in our living environments and their driving factors. Modeling changes of LULC in the future, together with the driving factors derived through analyzing the trends of past LULC changes, bring the opportunity to assess and orientate the current and future land-use policies. As the entryway of Quang Ninh province, Vietnam, Dong Trieu locale has experienced significant LULC changes during the past two decades. In this study, the spatial distribution of six Level I LULC classes, forest, cropland, orchards, waterbody, built-up, and barren land, in Dong Trieu district at 2000, 2010, and 2019 were obtained from Landsat imageries by maximum likelihood technique. The most significant changes observed over the past twenty years are a decrease of barren land (9.1%) and increases of built-up (8.1%) and orchards (6.8%). Driving factor analysis indicated that the changes of cropland and built-up were dependent on distance from road (DFR), distance from main road (DFMR), distance from urban (DFU), distance from water (DFW), elevation, slope, and population density. The changes of forest were dependent on all the driving forces listed above, except DFMR. The orchards mainly appeared near the high-population-density area. The transformation of the waterbody was affected by geography (elevation and slope) and population density. The higher the population density, the less barren the land would appear.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao Li ◽  
Shunsuke Managi

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has already caused 1,405,029 deaths worldwide, as of November 25th, 2020. Assessing whether land cover in people’s living environments affects COVID-19 health outcomes is an urgent and crucial public health problem. Here, we examine land cover data associated with the case fatality rate (CFR) of COVID-19 at the county-level, in the United States. A 1% increase in green space in the county is associated with a statistically significant 0.34% (95% confidence interval 0.13%-0.55%) decrease in the county’s COVID-19 CFR, and a 1% increase in emergent herbaceous wetlands are correlated with a 1.65% (0.19%-3.11%) decrease in the CFR. In addition, a 1% increase in high intensity developed area among the total developed area is related to a significant 3.63% (2.14%-5.12%) increase in the CFR, while a 1% increase in medium intensity developed area is associated with a 0.75% (-0.02%-1.51%) decrease. Our research highlights that governments could prevent similar pandemics in the future and even achieve some sustainable development goals by decreasing development intensity and increasing green space in living environments.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Al-amin Abbas Ahmad

Abstract Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) are important components of the environmental system and changes in it mirror the impacts of human activities on the environment. These impacts needed to be determined in order to get a clear picture of the extent at which different land use practices change over time. This study focused on the Land use and land cover changes of Fagge local government Kano state between 1991 and 2019 and also identify the driving forces of such changes. The data for the study two 30m x 30m Landsat images (Landsat 4&8) of the two years i.e. 2019 and 1991. The two images undergo series of image analysis and classification using ArcGIS 10.7 and ENVI 5.1 and the result where presented in form of maps, charts and tables. The result also shows that the changes that occurred from 1991 to 2019 in Fagge local government to be positive and negative changes. There happen to be a positive in the size of built-up areas in Fagge from 1991 – 2019 with a change of +4.678km2. The vegetation cover experienced a negative change of -8.87km2 while the barren land also had an increase in size with a positive change of +4.199. The data collected from previous studies indicated that the main driving behind the various changes may include; urban expansion, population growth, commercial and economic activities, security, and Government law and policies. It was recommended that Sufficient land use/land cover information should be acquired, Sensitization programs on land use / land cover, Geospatial techniques should be adopted by Government and NGO’s and lastly Government policies should geared to ensuring that there is balance in the utilization of the available land in the country


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Aqil Tariq ◽  
Hong Shu ◽  
Saima Siddiqui ◽  
Muhammad Imran ◽  
Muhammad Farhan

Change of land use and land cover (LULC) has been a key issue of natural resource conservation policies and environmental monitoring. In this study, we used multi-temporal remote sensing data and spatial analysis to assess the land cover changes in Fateh Jhang, Attock District, Pakistan. Landsat 7 (ETM+) for the years 2000, 2005 and 2010 and Landsat 8 (OLI/TIRS) for the year 2015 were classified using the maximum likelihood algorithms into built-up area, barren land, vegetation and water area. Post-classification methods of change detection were then used to assess the variation that took place over the study period. It was found that the area of vegetation has decreased by about 176.19 sq. km from 2000 to 2015 as it was converted to other land cover types. The built-up area has increased by 5.75%. The Overall Accuracy and Kappa coefficient were estimated at 0.92 and 0.77, 0.92 and 0.78, 0.90 and 0.76, 0.92 and 0.74, for the years 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015, respectively. It turned out that economic development, climate change and population growth are the main driving forces behind the change. Future research will examine the effects of changing land use types on Land Surface Temperature (LST) over a given time period.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juanle Wang ◽  
Haishuo Wei ◽  
Kai Cheng ◽  
Ge Li ◽  
Altansukh Ochir ◽  
...  

The increasingly serious problem of land degradation has a direct impact on the ecosystem and sustainable development in Mongolia. The influence of land degradation on the main China–Mongolia–Russia traffic arteries is currently unclear and poses a risk to the construction of transportation infrastructure. In this study, for the first time, we obtained land cover data from 1990, 2010, and 2015, at a 30 m, resolution based on the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) images along the China–Mongolia railway (Mongolia section). We then analyzed the change in the obtained land cover data using the geographic information system (GIS) spatial analysis technology to obtain the land pattern and development trend of this region. Results showed that the newly-increased degraded land was distributed mainly in the center of the region and tended to expand northward. The joint effect of natural and socioeconomic factors resulted in land degradation. We speculated that the significant temperature fluctuation and the decrease in rainfall were the inducing factors. Population migration, overgrazing, infrastructure construction, unreasonable mineral exploitation, and rapid urbanization aggravate the degree of land degradation. It is thus necessary to use a broader view to observe patterns of desertification and variations in regions along the Railway facing its sustainable development.


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