Multi-Objective Spatial Suitability Evaluation and Conflict Optimization Considering Productivity, Sustainability, and Livability in Southwestern Mountainous Areas of China

Space is the fundamental carrier for production, living, and ecological activities, and optimizing the spatial pattern is of vital importance to promote regional sustainable development. To achieve this goal, the core issues are to identify the risks of resource and environmental constraints of development and to realize the rational distribution of human living space. Based on the integration of multisource heterogeneous data, taking Yunnan Province, a typical mountainous area in China, as an example, this research proposes a multi-object suitability evaluation method based on 50 × 50 m grid data at the provincial scale. We build a spatial conflict analysis model to identify production–living–ecological space (PLES) and propose governance suggestions for different functional areas. The results show that (1) areas suitable for ecology make up the greatest proportion of Yunnan Province, but areas with living and ecological functions show obvious spatial complementarity; (2) areas suitable for production are restricted by steep slope, geological hazards and fragmented pattern; (3) areas suitable for living is rare, and they are mainly concentrated in the plains of central Yunnan; and (4) twenty-seven percent of area has potential spatial conflicts, among which 4.38% of the area is all suitable for production–living–ecological. The production–living advantage areas are concentrated in the central Yunnan UA (Urban agglomeration), which has a high spatial overlap. These results are expected to provide valuable insights to support comprehensive multifunctional spatial utilization and sustainable development in mountainous areas.

Karakteristik Lahan untuk Kesesuaian Tanaman Apel (Malus sylvestris Mill.) di Kecamatan Sindang Dataran, Kabupaten Rejang Lebong, Bengkulu

<p><strong>[<em>Land Characteristics for Suitability of Apples</em> (<em>Malus sylvestris</em> Mill.) <em>in Sindang Dataran District, Rejang Lebong Regency, Bengkulu</em>]</strong></p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p>Penilaian kesesuaian lahan merupakan tahap pertama dan penting dalam usaha pengembangan suatu komoditas pertanian. Kecamatan Sindang Dataran, Kabupaten Rejang Lebong merupakan salah satu lokasi yang direncanakan menjadi daerah pengembangan apel dengan temperatur udara mencapai 23oC dan ketinggian tempat bervariasi antara 785 – 1.129 lebih m dpl. dengan kondisi tanah yang cukup subur. Penelitian bertujuan untuk menentukan kelas kesesuaian lahan untuk tanaman apel. Penelitian dilakukan dengan metode survey dan observasi. Parameter yang diamati meliputi karakteristik lahan dan syarat tumbuh tanaman apel. Evaluasi kesesuaian lahan yang digunakan ialah kesesuaian lahan kualitatif, yaitu yang hanya didasarkan kondisi fisik lahan. Metode evaluasi kesesuaian lahan dilakukan dengan mengikuti prosedur dari FAO (1976), yaitu evaluasi kesesuaian lahan ini dilakukan dengan cara mencocokkan (matching) data antara karakteristik lahan dengan persyaratan tumbuh tanaman apel dan hasilnya didasarkan pada nilai terkecil (hukum minimum) sebagai keputusan kesesuaian lahan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kesesuaian lahan tanaman apel yang berada di Kecamatan Sindang Dataran, Kabupaten Rejang Lebong, dari faktor iklim termasuk S2 (cukup sesuai), sementara dari faktor ketersediaan hara termasuk S3 (sesuai marjinal). Hal yang menjadi faktor pembatas adalah rendahnya P tersedia, tetapi dapat diatasi dengan pemupukan sehingga dapat naik kelas menjadi S2. Melalui usaha pemupukan P maka Kecamatan Sindang Dataran memiliki potensi sebagai daerah pengembangan tanaman apel yang cukup sesuai.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong></p><p>Karakteristik lahan; Kesesuaian lahan untuk tanaman apel; Malus sylvertris Mill</p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>Land suitability assessment is the first and important stage in the development of an agricultural commodity. Sindang Dataran District, Rejang Lebong Regency is one of the locations that is planned to be an apple development area with air temperatures reaching 23oC and altitude varying between 785–1,129 meters above sea level with fairly fertile soil conditions. The aim of the study was to determine the land suitability class for apple plants. The research was conducted using survey and observation methods. Parameters observed included land characteristics and growing conditions for apple plants. Land suitability evaluation used qualitative land suitability, which is only based on the physical condition of the land. The land suitability evaluation method is carried out by following the procedure from FAO (1976), namely the evaluation of land suitability is carried out by matching data between land characteristics and the requirements for growing apples and the results are based on the smallest value (minimum law) as a land suitability decision. The results showed that the suitability of the land for apple crops in Sindang Dataran District, Rejang Lebong Regency, from climatic factors including S2 (quite suitable), while from nutrient availability factors including S3 (marginal according to). The limiting factor is the low available P, but it can be overcome by fertilization so that it can be promoted to S2. Through P fertilization efforts, Sindang Dataran District has the potential as a suitable apple crop development area.</p>

Soil Suitability for Growing Horticultural Crops in Kanamadi South Sub-Watershed of Karnataka

The suitability of the land resources in the watershed for various crops is necessary to choose the right crop and variety suitable for the area. In carrying out this assessment, the specific land requirements of a crop are compared with the characteristics of land resource mapped in the sub- watershed with this objective investigation was carried to assess land suitability for growing horticultural crops in Kanamadi South sub-watershed of Vijayapura district of Karnataka. The soil survey was conducted using 1:7920 scale, LISS IV satellite imagery. The soils were shallow to deep with clay loam to clay in texture. The soils were low in nitrogen and organic carbon, low to medium in phosphorus and sulphur, medium to high in potassium. Iron, copper, zinc and manganese were sufficient. Land suitability evaluation revealed that soils were moderately suitable for growing fruits such as guava (73.75% TGA), pomegranate (70.73% TGA), sapota (85.65% TGA). In case of flowers, major part of the study area was marginally suitable for crops such asrose (65.26% TGA) and jasmine (91.72% TGA). Around 11.55 per cent of the area was evaluated as unsuitable for growing fruit crops. The consideration of depth and nutrient status of soil in sub-watershed area is ideal to grow the horticultural crops like fruit crops with soil conservation measures to obtain food sustainability and nutrition level of people living the study area.

Suitability assessment for oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) and coconut (Cocus nucifera) cultivation in coastal plain sands of South Southern Nigeria

Some soils of coastal plain sands in South Southern Nigeria were assessed for oil palm and coconut cultivation. This research was carried out to evaluate the soils of the study area using rigid grid soil survey methodology at detailed scale. The study area (128.11 ha) was delineated into four soil mapping units based on soil type. A pedon was sunk in each mapping unit and described according to FAO. Three soil orders, including Entisols (Ahiara), Inceptisols (Kulfo) and Ultisols (Orlu), were identified. Parametric and limitation methods of land suitability evaluation were used. Major limitations to assessment were climate (mean annual temperatures) and soil physical properties (texture/structure). Aggregate suitability rating (both actual and potential) showed that Ultisols (pedons 3 and 4, covering 56.73 ha) was moderately suitable (S2) for coconut and marginally suitable (S3) for oil palm, Inceptisols (pedon 2, covering 54.25 ha) was marginally suitable (S3) for coconut but not suitable (NS) for oil palm, and Entisols (Pedon 1covering 17.13 ha) was not suitable (NS) for any of the crops. Thus, area with Entisols should not be used for cultivation of any of the crops due to major limitation in texture. Moreover, both assessment approaches captured the major limitations. Therefore, the use of any of the approaches employed in this study and for these crops becomes a matter of choice as both of them showed no major differences in the application of their procedures.

Virtual look around: comparing presence, cybersickness and usability for virtual tours across different devices

Virtual Reality has become readily available in the last few years through different devices, from desktop computers to head­-mounted displays (HMD). Also, virtual tours became popular with 360º panoramic photographs and video clips on online social media, so people could visit remote locations without being exposed to crowded transportation or long travels. Also, virtual tours demonstrate considerable potential as a form of escapism and even for remote teaching. Since we lack studies that evaluate the User Experience (UX) in virtual tours on different devices, this article aims to compare aspects of the User Experience (regarding sense of presence, cybersickness, and usability) in a virtual tour website developed in WebXR across different devices. To achieve our objective, we developed a virtual tour based on 360º pictures using WebXR API and React 360 framework and conducted an experiment with 41 undergraduate students using four different devices: a laptop computer, a smartphone, a Google Cardboard headset, and a Samsung Gear VR HMD. We evaluated users’ perceptions by adapting and translating the Suitability Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) and users’ performance by measuring the time to fulfill a set of tasks. The main findings from this study include that (i) the overall self-­reported experience using Google Cardboard is worse than using other devices, (ii) the users’ performance is quite similar between the platforms, (iii) there is evidence of unexpected cybersickness symptoms in tests with the smartphone, and (iv) the development of a plausible hypothesis concerning low usability having an effect upon the sense of presence. Additional contributions of our research are the adaptation, translation into Portuguese, psychometric analysis, and revised scoring procedures of the SEQ.

Study on Feng Shui (Geomantic) Suitability Evaluation of Mausoleums in Nanjing City Based on GIS

Taking the mausoleums in the main urban area of Nanjing city as the study object, with the support of GIS technology, this paper extracts eight influencing factors (surface roughness, elevation, surface cutting depth, surface peaks, outfall, river system, slope, and aspect) corresponding to geomantic elements (“Long”, “Sha”, “Shui”, and “Xue”) in the geographical environments of mausoleums. The AHP is applied in the correlation weight method to calculate the weights of the eight influencing factors, while the information content method is applied in the grading method to calculate the numerical index of each factor. The feng shui (geomantic) suitability of the mausoleums in the main urban area of Nanjing is evaluated using the AHP-weighted information content method and by combining expert knowledge and experience with mathematical statistical techniques. According to the feng shui (geomantic) suitability evaluation results obtained for the mausoleums in the study area, the relatively low-suitability area accounts for 14.55% of the entire study area, the low-suitability area accounts for 25.40%, the suitable area accounts for 29.13%, the relatively high-suitability area accounts for 22.00%, and the high-suitability area accounts for 8.92%. Finally, through a sensitivity analysis of the model, a verification analysis applied using random mausoleums and a feng shui (geomantic) analysis of the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, the feng shui (geomantic) suitability evaluation results obtained for the mausoleums analyzed herein are found to be consistent with the actual distribution of the mausoleum sites. The research shows that the AHP-weighted information method based on GIS is suitable for evaluating the feng shui (geomantic) suitability of mausoleums.

Intelligent Rural Tourism Environmental Suitability Evaluation System Based on a Wireless Sensor Network

After years of vigorous development, the scale of rural tourism industry has gradually expanded throughout the country, and it has become an important means of coordinating urban and rural areas to drive farmers’ incomes and get rich. Nowadays, the level of informatization is constantly improving, the construction of smart cities is constantly advancing, the personalized demand of tourists is increasingly strong, especially the rural tourist spots scattered in the vast countryside which have a great spatial breadth, and the traditional management method can no longer meet the needs of the source objects whose main travel mode is self-driving. Therefore, only when rural tourism develops in the direction of intelligence can it successfully realize the transformation and upgrading of rural tourism industry. This paper takes a rural tourism resort in a certain area as the research object and builds an intelligent rural tourism environmental suitability evaluation system with three criterion levels: natural geographic conditions, traffic environmental conditions, and tourism spatial conditions. The weight of each indicator layer is obtained through the analytic hierarchy process, and the reclassified raster data of indicators is weighted and superimposed on the ArcGIS operating platform to obtain the evaluation result of the environmental suitability of smart rural tourism. According to the results of suitability evaluation, the most suitable area is selected as the potential area of the intelligent rural tourism environment in a certain area. According to the natural and cultural tourism resource conditions in the block, the potential block is divided into functions. A comprehensive comparison of the suitability spatial differentiation map of the smart rural tourism environment in a certain area with the suitability spatial differentiation map of each subsystem can more clearly find that the suitability score of the economic development subsystem and the basic support subsystem is a county-level village in a certain area. Among them, the suitability of the rural economic development subsystem is similar to the distribution of the suitability of the smart rural tourism environment in a certain area; that is, it is positively correlated with the suitability of the smart rural tourism environment. Therefore, improving the level of rural economic development and increasing investment in the construction of a smart rural tourism environment play an important role in improving the level of public services and infrastructure coverage.

Land suitability evaluation for surface irrigation development using parametric evaluation approach: The case of Gudina Wacho watershed, Western Ethiopia

Evaluating land suitability of a given watershed is vital to predict potential and limitation of the land for surface irrigation. The present study was evaluated the suitability of Gudina Wacho watershed for surface irrigation development using parametric evaluation approach. The watershed was classified in to four lands mapping units, based on three soil profile pits were opened at each land mapping unit. Soil samples from each profile pit have been taken to analyze each selected soil physical and chemical properties. Slop analysis of the watershed was computed from the DEM using GIS technique. Results of the land suitability evaluation for surface irrigation showed that, a total area of 3064 ha (72.6%) was slightly suitable (S3) and area of 1154 ha (27.4%) was currently not suitable (N1). The limiting factors were slop, soil texture and drainage. For all land mapping units, chemical soil parameters such as CaCO3, ECe and pH, and the physical parameter (soil depth) were not limiting factors for surface irrigation in the study watershed. Therefore, the area is potential for irrigation production with some limitations and under proper management it can benefit the local community to meet the food demand. In order to sustainably develop the area for irrigation development; land leveling operation or soil conservation work has to be incorporated to break surface slope and to make it suitable for surface irrigation.