Wildfire is one of the main hazards affecting large areas and causes great damage all over the world, and the rapid development of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) increases the threat of wildfires ...that have ecological, social, and economic consequences. As one of the most widely used methods for tracking fire, remote sensing can provide valuable information about fires, but it is not always available, and needs to be supplemented by data from other sources. Social media is an emerging but underutilized data source for emergency management, contains a wealth of disaster information, and reflects the public’s real-time witness and feedback to fires. In this paper, we propose a fusion framework of multi-source data analysis, including social media data and remote sensing data, cellphone signaling data, terrain data, and meteorological data to track WUI fires. Using semantic web technology, the framework has been implemented as a Knowledge Base Service and runs on top of WUIFire ontology. WUIFire ontology represents WUI fire–related knowledge and consists of three modules: system, monitoring, and spread, and tracks wildfires happening in WUIs. It provides a basis for tracking and analyzing a WUI fire by fusing multi-source data. To showcase the utility of our approach in a real-world scenario, we take the fire in the Yaji Mountain Scenic Area, Beijing, China, in 2019 as a case study. With object information identified from remote sensing, fire situation information extracted from Weibo, and fire perimeters constructed through fire spread simulation, a knowledge graph is constructed and an analysis using a semantic query is carried out to realize situational awareness and determine countermeasures. The experimental results demonstrate the benefits of using a semantically improved multi-source data fusion framework for tracking WUI fire.
In the context of rapid urbanization, building an ecological security pattern that takes into account both ecological protection and economic growth is of great significance for guiding high-quality ...regional development. Taking the Hefei metropolitan area as an example, we identified the ecological source from three aspects—the importance of ecosystem services, ecological sensitivity, and landscape connectivity—by using NPP-VIIRS night light data, impervious surfaces, and the topographical index to the rest of the landscape resistance surface, and the least cumulative resistance model to identify ecological corridors and ecological buffer zones. We then constructed a comprehensive regional ecological security pattern. The results show the following: (1) The ecological source area of the Hefei metropolitan area is 15,538.74 km2, accounting for 24.5% of the total study area. It is mainly composed of the Dabie Mountains, the Yangtze River, the Huai River, and Chaohu Lake. (2) The area of an ecological buffer zone, ecological transition zone, and development and construction zone account for 21.8%, 39.7%, and 38.5%, respectively. Among them, the ecological buffer zone serves as a protective barrier for the ecological source area; therefore, development and construction activities should be restricted. The ecological transition zone should be constructed with low development intensity, and the development and construction zone can be carried out with greater development intensity. (3) The total length of the ecological corridor is 2816.89 km, with the mainland of the corridor being cultivated land. Identified by superposition of the land use, the area of conflict of urban expansion is 305.23 km2, mainly distributed along the Yangtze River and around Chao Lake. The results may provide decision support for the construction of ecological security in the study area.
Important for promoting the integrated protection and systematic management of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and sandy areas, ecological networks form the backbone of the ...regional ecological security pattern. An improved morphological spatial pattern analysis coupled with a minimum cumulative resistance model (MSPA–MCR) based on multi-source data was used to study, on a provincial scale, the ecological security pattern of Ningxia, an ecologically fragile region in the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China. The results show the following: (1) A reasonable classification of ecological sources and ecological corridors is key to constructing hierarchical ecological networks. Classifying ecological sources by replacing patch areas with energy factors and identifying the importance of ecological corridors by modifying the gravity model with the energy factors proposed in this paper could improve the rationality of the hierarchical structure division of ecological networks. (2) Grassland as the substrate vegetation type is an important ecological source type in arid and semi-arid ecologically fragile areas, and forests and lake wetlands are the main ecological source types in mountainous areas and oasis areas, respectively. The study area was located in the arid–semi-arid transitional area, with a variety of ecological types, such as mountain, oasis, and desert. Therefore, the complex ecological source types of forest–grassland–wetland appear in some areas. (3) There are 45 ecological patch groups that can be classified as ecological sources in Ningxia, including 10 primary source groups. The number of primary source groups is small, and their spatial distribution is unbalanced. There are two categories of ecological corridors, the river corridor and the mountain corridor, and the network connectivity is poor. (4) The ecological network structure of Ningxia is presented as an ecological security structure consisting of one belt, three screens, three corridors, and five clusters, forming a hierarchical nested ecological network security structure system.
The survival and sustainability of regional species is constrained by habitat quality. In recent decades, the intensification of human activities on a global scale has had a profound impact on ...regional ecosystems and poses a serious threat to regional sustainable development. Scientific measurement of the drivers of habitat quality can provide important support for the development of effective biodiversity conservation and sustainable land-use policies. Taking the Hung River Valley as an example, the InVEST model was used to assess the habitat quality of the study area in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 and to explore its spatial and temporal variation and distribution characteristics in combination with the spatial autocorrelation model, and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was used to explore the drivers of habitat quality change. The results show the following: (1) The overall habitat quality shows an increasing trend during 2000–2020, but the expansion of construction land in the central region plays a dominant role in the degradation of regional habitat quality. (2) The “Guide-Ledu” line is the dividing line of habitat quality in the Hung River Valley, with a general distribution of “south is good, north is bad” and “south is hot, north is cold”. (3) Natural factors such as slope and elevation basically shape the overall distribution pattern of habitat quality, while urbanisation factors such as population density, gross domestic product, and the night-time lighting index are generally negatively correlated with habitat quality. The results of the study can reveal the linkage between ecosystems and land-use change in the context of urbanisation.
Land use changes induced by human activities change landscape patterns and ecological processes, threatening regional and global ecosystems. Terrain gradient and anthropogenic multi-policy regulation ...can have a pronounced effect on landscape components. Forecasting the changing trend of landscape ecological risk (LER) is important for national ecological security and regional sustainability. The present study assessed changes in LER in the Sichuan-Yunnan Ecological Barrier over a 20-year period using land use data from 2000, 2010, and 2020. The enhanced Markov-PLUS (patch-generating land use simulation) model was used to predict and analyze the spatial distribution pattern of LER under the following three scenarios. These were business-as-usual (BAU), urban development and construction (UDC), and ecological development priority (EDP) in 2030. The influence of terrain conditions on LER was also explored. The results showed that over the past 20 years, the LER index increased and then decreased and was dominated by medium and low risk, accounting for more than 70% of the total risk-rated area. The highest and higher risk areas for the three future scenarios have increased in spatial extent. The UDC scenario showed the largest increase of 3341.13 km2 and 2684.85 km2, respectively. The highest-risk level has a strong selectivity for low gradients, with high-level risks more likely to occur at low gradients. The response of ecological risk to gradient changes shows a positive correlation distribution for high-gradient areas and a negative correlation distribution for low-gradient areas. The influence of future topographic gradient changes on LER remains significant. The value of multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) for identifying the spatial heterogeneity of terrain gradient and LER is highlighted. It can play an important role in the formulation of scientific solutions for LER prevention and of an ecological conservation policy for mountainous areas with complex terrain.
At present, there is obvious regional segmentation in the protection of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. ArcGIS spatial analysis method and minimum cumulative ...resistance (MCR) models are used to investigate the distribution characteristics of ICH and the suitability of corridor construction in this region. On this basis, the strategies for heritage corridor construction are proposed. (1) The results show that the density and distribution of ICH in the Yangtze River Economic Belt have distinct regional characteristics: most of the high-density areas are in the eastern region, yet the low-density areas are mainly in the western region. (2) The suitability of heritage corridor construction decreases from west to east, and the unsuitable areas are mainly distributed in the western region. (3) According to the spatial characteristics of heritage distribution and the suitability of regional corridor construction, the ArcGIS spatial analysis method is used to determine 37 heritage corridors in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. (4) On this basis, a corridor construction method that uses linear landscape as the corridor theme and connects individual heritage points is proposed. The development strategy of heritage corridors should be in line with local conditions in different regions so as to realize regional collaborative development. Furthermore, the influence domain of heritage corridors should be further increased.
The quantitative and spatial–temporal variations in the characteristics of ecosystem value can be helpful to improve environmental protection and climate adaptation measures and adjust the balance ...between economic development and the ecological environment. The arid and semi-arid regions of China are undergoing the effects of climate change across the entire northern hemisphere. Their ecological environments are fragile and in conflict with anthropogenic activities, which significantly altered more ecosystems services in these regions. Therefore, estimating the effects of anthropogenic activities on ecosystem services is important for formulating ecological policy and regional environmental mitigation plans of these regions. This study employed the model of ecosystem service value (ESV) assessment and the bivariate spatial autocorrelation method to reveal the spatiotemporal variations in the characteristics of ecosystem value in the arid and semi-arid ecological regions of China and its interaction with human activities. Results showed that (1) the total value of ES of the study area increased from USD 487,807 billion in 2000 to USD 67,831,150 billion 2020; (2) the ES value provided by forest land first increased by 5.60% from 2000 to 2020; (3) the ESV provided by grassland showed an overall decline over the 20 years. Food and raw material production showed the lowest ES value, and climate regulation and soil conservation decreased from 2000 to 2020; (4) the index of human footprint patches decreased from 45.80% in 2000 to 17.63% in 2020, while the high and very high human footprint index areas increased significantly, mainly due to the rapid urbanization and improvement of railway networks in these areas. Spatially, the regions with high human footprint were mostly dispersed in the northeastern of China such as Shanxi and Gansu, whereas the regions with a low human footprint remained mainly located in the central and southwestern parts of China; (5) significant spatial dependencies between changes in ESV and the human footprint index were recorded. Our study could provide a scientific basis for ecosystem functions regulation and land development security in arid and semi-arid ecological regions.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the economic development of Tibet has been accelerating. The Yarlung Zangbo River and its two tributaries, as the region with the largest population ...concentration and the fastest economic development in Tibet, has been under the dual influence of global climate warming and the intensification of human social and economic activities, where a high number of land types, such as woodland, grassland, and water areas, have been transformed into other land types, and the residential area has expanded in a disorderly manner. The ability to maintain sustainable regional development has been severely damaged. To meet the requirements of different stages of social and economic development and regional social development goals, in this study, we use the Yarlung Zangbo River and its two tributaries of Tibet as an example. Based on the Markov–PLUS model and considering the natural, social, and cultural conditions of the basin, combined with the multi-landscape simulation of land use, we predict the land use situation of the Yarlung Zangbo River and its two tributaries of Tibet in 2038. We observed the following: (i) the Markov–PLUS model has a high simulation accuracy for different land types in the study area, and can sufficiently simulate the changes in different land types in the Yarlung Zangbo River and its two tributaries of Tibet; and (ii) the simulation settings of the three landscapes basically meet the different development modes and paths of the basin in the future. There were obvious differences in the structure of land use in the basin, among which there were obvious differences, especially agricultural land and water areas. Use of the Markov–PLUS model can provide data support and references for the implementation in terms of ecological scrutiny, landscape planning, and early warnings for food production consumption security and unreasonable land use, in order to achieve the sustainable development of the basin.
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