Status and Threats of Wetland Change in Land Use Pattern and Planning

Wetland-related studies documented the loss of native species diversity and promotion of the biotic homogenization due to wetland loss. Excessive withdrawals of water from wetlands for residential, agricultural, or industrial use are responsible for wetland degradation. Constructions of dams impedes water flow and replenishment of wetlands, and it also creates a hazard to aquatic living organisms. Climate change causing some wetlands to disappear under rising sea levels, while others are severely impacted by changing climatic conditions, including drought. So necessary steps such as increase wetlands and prevention of the illegal swamping of wetlands, etc. should be taken for conserving the wetland biodiversity from the threatening of unplanned urbanization, purifying the environment and mainlining the sustainable development. Though the Ramsar Convention policy exists to persevere wetlands and achieve sustainable development throughout the world, mass consciousness, greater participation of local people, use of indigenous knowledge in the management strategies are needed to protect wetlands.

Institutional Analysis of Protection Forest Area Land Use Pattern in the North Bandung Area, Bandung Regency

Land use degradation has always been a problem for forest areas. Numerous past studies have investigated that there are patterns in the forest area's land use management that support forest sustainability and society's economy. This research aims to identify the action arena and patterns of interaction, to describe the outcomes of the two land use patterns, and to formulate the strategy related to forest area land use pattern in North Bandung Area, Bandung Regency. This research used Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework as the research method. The identified action arena includes the pattern of commodity and profession transfer. The actors involved were State-owned Forest Enterprises (Perum Perhutani), Village Administrations, forest extensions, Forest Village Community Association (FVCA), and Forest and Farm Producers Organization (FFPO). The most dominating actor in land use activities in both patterns was Perum Perhutani, along with FVCA and FFPO. The pattern of interaction that exists between actors was prospering with only minor problems found within its coordination system. The outcome of the application of these two patterns, among others, is to raise public awareness in conserving forests and improving the community's economy. The land management strategy for forest areas can be directed using the Penta helix concept.

Behind the Land Use Mix: Measuring the Functional Compatibility in Urban and Sub-Urban Areas of China

Land use mix (LUM) has long been employed as one of the key methods to improve urban vibrancy and optimize built-up areas. Within the urban studies discipline, LUM is usually defined as a functional compatible but diverse land use pattern. However, its quantitative methodological approaches thereby heavily rely on the diversity of land use and fail to consider functional compatibility as another critical defining characteristic, providing only a partial picture of land use pattern. Thus, reviewing LUM’s concepts and definitions, this paper develops a new index to describe functional compatibility according to the spatial segregation measurements. To evaluate and provide empirical evidence of the proposed index, this paper selects the medium-sized city of Xiangtan as a case study. The findings demonstrate that Xiangtan exhibits a quite compatible land use pattern to a certain extent. In addition, particular clusters with relatively incompatible land use patterns are observed, which are closely linked to a special historical working unit, the ‘Danwei’ compounds, and a special rural planning authority, ‘Township-Village-Enterprise’, in China. Finally, an integrated evaluation is conducted based on the proposed index and Shannon entropy index, which can be regarded as a useful tool in future land use planning while contributing to shaping a sustainable form of urban development.

Heavy metals in contaminated soil: source, accumulation, health risk and remediation process

Heavy metals contamination of soil is an issue of global concern that ultimately results in toxicity and diseases in humans and animals through consumption of food crops from contaminated soil. The toxic effects of these metals, even though they do not have any biological role, remain present in some or the other form harmful for the human body and its proper functioning. Heavy metals in the soil refers to some significant heavy metals of biological toxicity, including Cobalt (Co), Cadmium (Cd), Lead (Pb), Chromium (Cr), and Arsenic (As) etc. With the development of the global economy, both type and content of heavy metals in the soil caused by indiscriminate use for human purposes has altered their geochemical cycles and biochemical balance. There are many known sources of harmful metals, including the earth, which releases them into food, air, and water, and anthropogenic activities, such as the application of fertilizer in agriculture, the use of pesticides and herbicides, and irrigation. Other sources are automobile emissions, paints, cigarette smoking, industries, and sewage and waste disposal. This review gives details about some heavy metals their toxicity, bioaccumulation, biodegradation, mobility and solubility in contaminated soil along with their health effects. Remediation of heavy metal in contaminated soils is necessary to reduce the associated risks, make the available soil safe for agricultural production, enhance food security and scale down land tenure problems arising from changes in the land use pattern the review recommends regular monitoring of heavy metals in soil, vegetables and foodstuffs to prevent excessive accrual in food chain.

Study on hourly temperature features over Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram and Minicoy during 1969-2012

Amongst all the climatic elements, temperature plays a major role in detecting and analyzing climatic change and its impact. The variability in resident time of the surface temperature is studied to investigate whether any change in temperature has taken place. Analysis of the results is presented for Mumbai, a mega city with large change in land-use pattern, Thiruvananthapuram, a semi-urban city with moderate changes in land-use pattern and Minicoy, an Island city without much change in land-use pattern. These three places representing varying geographical locations and climatic conditions are unique in nature, however having uniform maritime influence. It is revealed that the change is large in Mumbai in comparison with others as expected. The study proposes a new methodology based on the resident time of temperatures and its trend and could be used as a tool for relative ranking of cities and to gauge the source and sink regions of climate change forcing. The resident time of temperatures shows increasing trend above the mean temperature and decreasing trend below the mean temperature of the initial decade. Decadal linear increasing trends in mean temperatures are 0.256 °C, 0.159 °C and 0.146 °C per decade for Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram and Minicoy respectively. This confirms the effect of global warming unequivocally irrespective of urban effect. Decadal linear increasing trends in mean temperature during non-monsoon season for Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram and Minicoy are 0.315 °C, 0.155 °C and 0.181 °C per decade respectively. The rate of increase of mean temperature for Mumbai and Minicoy during monsoon season is 0.143 °C and 0.081 °C per decade respectively, are significantly less than the decadal trend in annual mean, which suggests that rainfall activity seems to be the correction factor for the increasing trend in the annual mean temperature which otherwise would have been a higher value. However, the rate of increase of mean temperature for Thiruvananthapuram during monsoon season for the study period is 0.172 °C per decade, which is slightly higher than the decadal trend in annual mean. Noticeable changes in resident time during monsoon season are in conformity with change in rainfall patterns.

Columnar aerosol types and compositions over peninsular Southeast Asia based on long-term AERONET data

Aerosol chemical components such as black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC) regulate aerosol optical properties, which in turn drive the atmospheric radiative forcing estimations due to aerosols. In this study, we used the long-term measurements from AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) to better understand the aerosol types and composition with respect to their seasonal and spatial variabilities in peninsular Southeast Asia (PSEA, here defined as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar). Two methods (i.e., aerosol type cluster and aerosol component retrieval) were applied to determine the aerosol type and chemical composition during the biomass-burning (BB) season. AERONET sites in northern PSEA showed a higher AOD (aerosol optical depth) compared to that of southern PSEA. Differences in land use pattern, geographic location, and weather regime caused much of the aerosol variability over PSEA. Lower single-scattering albedo (SSA) and higher fine-mode fraction (FMF) values were observed in February and March, suggesting the predominance of BB type aerosols with finer and stronger absorbing particles during the dry season. However, we also found that the peak BB month (i.e., March) in northern PSEA may not coincide with the lowest SSA once dust particles have mixed with the other aerosols. Furthermore, we investigated two severe BB events in March of 2014 and 2015, revealing a significant BrC fraction during BB event days. On high AOD days, although the BC fraction was high, the BrC fraction remained low due to lack of aerosol aging. This study highlights the dominance of carbonaceous aerosols in the PSEA atmosphere during the BB season, while also revealing that transported dust particles and BrC aerosol aging may introduce uncertainties into the aerosol radiative forcing calculation.

Integrating Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation into Land Use Optimization: A Case Study in Huailai County, China

Land use plays a crucial role in climate change adaptation and mitigation, as the reasonable design of land use distribution can positively impact these things. Therefore, research interest in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in land use and management has been growing. However, the adaptation and mitigation strategies have been handled separately at different dimensions and spatial levels. In this study, we presented a modeling framework for land use optimization that integrates climate change adaptation and mitigation, developed the model, and then applied it to Huailai County, wherein environmental and socioeconomic conditions are sensitive to climate change. The regional land use optimization model was combined with a linear programming model and a modified cellular automata model. Subsequently, the climate change adaptation and mitigation constraints, including ecological water demand, spatial suitability, and carbon sequestration, were incorporated into the model. The results indicate that most regions in the study area could adapt to and mitigate climate change with a constant land use pattern, and the land use conversion region under different climate change scenarios was primarily located in the topography transition region. The optimization results also reveal trade-offs between climate change adaptation and mitigation that were manifested with an increase in carbon sequestration and ecological water demand accompanied by decreases in the net income of agricultural production. Thus, it is necessary to simultaneously incorporate climate change adaptation and mitigation into land use optimization and management, and the proposed model provides a feasible method to incorporate them and balance their trade-offs in land use pattern optimization at a regional scale.

Urban form and economic sustainability in housing projects

Urban areas in metropolitan cities like Cairo suffer from economic, social, and environmental predicaments. Urban economic sustainability is an approach that reforms the urban performance to gain direct benefits such as minimizing costs and maximizing profits and indirect benefits as better social, environmental, and cultural aspects. This research suggests applying such an approach to enhance Egyptian housing projects. The main research question is how to evaluate the economic sustainability of urban forms?. The study presents a “Sustainable Urban Economy model” (SUE model) linking urban fabric, land use pattern, transportation, and street network design with economic sustainability. Research methods and tools include interviews (Delphi method) with 25 urban planning/design and urban economic experts to refine the model. Results show the most effective components of the urban form on economic sustainability (accessibility and degree of permeability, population density, built, and the impact of sub-indicators on the main components. Moreover, results indicate that the seven most influential indicators are the built-up to total space ratio, mixed-use ratio, built-up ratio, population density, floor area ratio, degree of accessibility, and public transportation. Experts suggested values for the seven indicators to measure how the urban form can achieve high economic, environmental, and social performance in the Egyptian context.

Assessment of Temporal Distribution of Noise Pollution in Delhi using ArcGIS

Noise pollution affects day-to-day life both mentally and physically. Hence, it’s a growing problem in every major city of the world. Many diseases have been proven to be associated directly with rise in noise level. To combat the noise level government agencies have laid down certain guidelines which suggest noise level in different location to be in prescribed limits. These noise limits is different for different land-use pattern and also different for different timings also. Daytime generally experiences more noise level than night time in almost all the locations. In present study, noise level of a particular day of 24 hr is taken from 26 locations. These noise levels are used to construct noise map in ArcGIS for Delhi for both daytime ad night time. These noise maps are used to present a comparative study of noise pollution between daytime and night time. Research Study suggest that in the daytime most of the area of Delhi experiences 55-60 dB noise level while in the night time it is experienced that most of the location in Delhi, noise level is 50-55 dB.