An Assessment of Urban Expansion Impacts on Land Transformation of Rajpur-Sonarpur Municipality

Urban expansion, population pressure, and increasing industrialization are influenced the world's natural environment, increased climate change, and global warming. Land use and land cover (LULC) changes are occurring due to anthropogenic activities and the results are land transformation, thermal variation, heat stress, and massive vegetation loss, which is increased oxygen deficiency and air pollution. Remote sensing-based Landsat TM and OLI/TIRS data were used to identify the land transformation and the effect of urbanization in Rajpur-Sonarpur Municipality in the years 2000 and 2020. The Built-up land was increased due to anthropogenic activities and around 12.16% area has been increased. Similarly, the agricultural land has been increased by 2.10 km2 area and vegetation area has been decreased around 6.52 km2 in the study area. The vegetation degradation areas were located in the South, South-west, and central parts of this study area. Correspondingly, North, North-west and central parts have a noticeable amount of built-up area developed. During twenty years, 6.97°C temperature was increased due to urban expansion, population pressure, transportation accessibility, and other urban amenities. The overall accuracies of classification maps were 96.25% and 91.64 % and the kappa coefficients were 0.95 and 0.89 respectively.

Farmland Transfers in China: From Theoretic Framework to Practice

Land transformation in agriculture is a crucial global issue for food safety and regional sustainable development. In the context of Chinese rural revitalization strategy, farmland transfer has become an increasingly engaging area of focus for those in a broad range of fields. In this paper, we make a comprehensive review of land transformation in agriculture through literature analysis. Farmland transfers in China were characterized as five dimensions: public policy, market mechanisms, influencing factors, optimization of spatial distribution, and practical results. Meanwhile, we shed light on limitations of the theories and methodologies for farmland transfers in previous studies, and propose the highlights of farmland transfers in China in the future: (1) refining the theoretical systems of farmland transfer under the background of transformations, (2) optimizing land use configuration for farmland transfers within the context of national strategic decisions, (3) developing the land use model supported by big data for understanding farmland transformation; (4) enhancing the comprehensive analysis and interdisciplinary application perspective for farmland transfer issues.

Linking Greenspace Ecological Networks Optimization into Urban Expansion Planning: Insights from China’s Total Built Land Control Policy

Greenspace ecological networks (GENs) optimization is an effective way to prevent landscape fragmentation and promote ecological processes. Built land sprawl is an important factor affecting this optimization. However, few studies have specifically analyzed the encroachments caused by existing built land on GENs. Given the insights from China’s total built land control policy, this study proposed a new idea of linking GENs optimization into urban expansion planning through land transformation. This idea was implemented in the Su-Xi-Chang area and integrated a series of methods, emphasizing the importance of built land encroachments removal for restoring the connectivity and quality of GENs. We identified that the built land encroached on GENs. Furthermore, we proposed to transfer the scattered rural/industrial land, whose amount was set as the land quota for urban expansion planning. Four scenarios of urban expansion were simulated based on China’s land use policies/practices and assessed by landscape metrics. The land transformation happened between rural and urban land. The main findings indicated that more inclusive urban expansion planning with consideration of the GENs optimization can be obtained. This study has practical contributions regarding GENs optimization and urban expansion planning for policymakers and our ideas of land transformation provide a reference for similar studies.

EFFICIENCY OF LAND TRANSFORMATION IN THE LAND OF SOLAR ENERGY (KREMENCHUK TOWN AS AN EXAMPLE)

The article considers the problems of modern use of urban areas, which are mostly related with the lack of reasonable scientifically and economically rational land policy. The issues of rational urban land using and land management in settlements have been studied by many domestic scientists, but to achieve the goal of rational and efficient land using, there is a need to continue research on these issues, especially at the regional and local levels. In particular, this applies to the formation of the mechanism of payment for land in conditions where the collection of taxes on labor and entrepreneurship significantly exceeds the amount of payment for land and other natural resources. The article gives an example of effective transformation of reserve lands which are not provided for permanent use and rent, located in the peripheral zone of the city, in the land of solar energy. The issue is considered from the standpoint of the value of unused urban land in their ability to generate additional income. Calculations to determine the efficiency of land transformation in the land of solar energy were made on the example of the commissioned solar power plant LLC «NOVE TEPLO", which is in the northern industrial hub of Kremenchuk, Poltava region, which covers an area of ​​150.00 hectares, and the total capacity of installed solar panels 75 MW. The total income of land transformation from reserve lands to solar energy lands for 10 years and rent income from 150 hectares of land for the specified period for reserve lands in Kremenchuk according to the values ​​of capitalized rent income standards are determined. The total income after the transformation of land was almost 300 times higher than the total income received before the transformation. Rating of ground-based SES was created by using the PV GIS web application. This tool allows you to estimate the average monthly and annual energy production from a solar electrical system connected to the grid. PV GIS calculates the optimal slope and slope exposure, which maximizes annual energy production.

Local Fractal Connections to Characterize the Spatial Processes of Deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Deforestation by human activities is a common issue in Amazonian countries. This occurs at different spatial and temporal scales causing primary forest loss and land fragmentation issues. During the deforestation process as the forest loses connectivity, the deforested patches create new intricate connections, which in turn create complex networks. In this study, we analyzed the local connected fractal dimension (LCFD) of the deforestation process in the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve (SBR) with two segmentation methods, —CA-wavelet and K-means—to categorize the complexity of deforested patches’ connections and then relate these with the spatial processes. The results showed an agreement with both methods, in which LCFD values below 1 corresponded to isolated patches with simple shapes and those above 1 signified more complex and connected patches. From CA-wavelet a threshold of 1.57 was detected allowing us to identify and discern low and high land transformation, while the threshold for K-means was 1.61. Both values represent the region from which deforestation performs local aggressive expansion networks. The thresholds were used to map the LCFD in which all spatial processes were visually detected. However, the threshold of 1.6 ± 0.03 was more effective in discerning high land transformation. such as shrinkage and attrition, in the deforestation process in the SBR.

Land and clean energy trade-off: estimating India’s future land requirement to fulfil INDC commitment

Purpose For India, with its low agricultural productivity and huge population, land acquisition has always been a serious policy challenge in the installation of land-intensive power projects. India has experienced a large number of projects getting stalled because of land conflict. Yet, there is a paucity of literature pertinent to India that tries to estimate future land requirements taking into consideration of land occupation metric. Design/methodology/approach In the present study, the dynamic land transformation and land occupation metrics of nine energy sources, both conventional and renewable, are estimated to further determine the magnitude of land requirement that India needs to prepare itself to fulfil its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) commitments. This is illustrated through two different scenarios of energy requirement growth rates, namely, conservative and advanced. Findings This analysis suggests that, while nuclear energy entails the lowest dynamic land transformation when land occupation metric is taken into account, waste to energy source possesses least land requirement, followed by coal-fired source. Hydro energy source has highest requirement both in terms of dynamic land transformation and land occupation. It is also seen that land requirement will be 96% and 120% more in INDC scenario than business as usual (i.e. if India continues with its current share of renewables in its energy portfolio in 2030) considering a conservative and an advanced growth rate, respectively. Research limitations/implications Some policy recommendations are provided that may aid policymakers to better address the trade-off between clean energy and land and incorporate it into policy planning. This study has not been able to consider future technical efficiency improvement possibilities for all energy sources, which can be incorporated in the proposed framework for further insight. Originality/value This paper provides a framework for estimation of future land requirement to fulfil India’s INDC energy plans which is not available in existing literature. The authors confirm that this manuscript is an original work.