Global urbanization and urban sprawl have made urban land efficiency (ULE) a significant issue for sustainable development. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD), the largest globalizing city region in ...China, has experienced dramatic urbanization, and land for future development has become a scarce commodity. This paper explores the spatial patterns and underlying determinants of ULE in the YRD, focusing on accessibility and economic transition. We find that the spatial agglomeration effect of ULE has intensified with the development of transportation accessibility and has mainly spread from southern Jiangsu to other areas. The integrated transportation and spatial autoregressive (TSAR) model suggests that accessibility and globalization play a significantly positive role in ULE, and that marketization as well as decentralization also have significant effects. Furthermore, a geographically weighted regression (GWR) shows that the drivers of ULE vary across the YRD. ULE in northern Zhejiang is more sensitive to foreign direct investment (FDI) and tertiary industry development, while ULE in southern and central Jiangsu are more likely to be associated with globalization and labor-intensive manufacturing.
•The determinants of urban land efficiency (ULE) are explored in the YRD, focusing on accessibility and economic transition.•The spatial agglomeration effect of ULE has intensified with the development of transportation accessibility.•Accessibility and globalization and marketization as well as decentralization play a significantly positive role in ULE.•The drivers of ULE, mainly forces of globalization and economic development, also vary across the YRD.
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•Integrate the PLUS and InVEST models to predict carbon storage.•Incorporate carbon storage dynamics to identify ecological conservation and restoration areas.•Carbon storage will ...fall by 15.43 Tg in 2020–2060.•Carbon storage will likely increase along lakes and the Yangtze River.•Ecological conservation and restoration areas in the ECSS will increase 32.22% compared to today situation.
Limited attention has been given to improving carbon storage by identifying ecological conservation and restoration areas (ECRAs). In this research, we proposed a new framework for identifying ECRAs by incorporating future carbon storage changes into ecological security patterns (ESPs), including several models of the Patch-generating Land Use Simulation (PLUS), Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Service and Tradeoffs (InVEST), Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) and circuit theory. This new framework was applied in Jiangsu Yangtze River Economic Belt, East China. To evaluate the effectiveness of this new framework, we compared two scenarios: an ecological priority scenario (EPS) where future carbon storage change was not considered and an ecosystem carbon sequestration scenario (ECSS) where future carbon storage change was explicitly incorporated. Under the EPS, ecological conservation areas and ecological restoration areas were 11169.87 km2 and 221.11 km2, respectively. Under the ECSS, the ecological conservation areas and ecological restoration areas were 14768.76 km2 and 244.89 km2, respectively. Carbon storage will be most likely to increase around lakes and the Yangtze River, and the identified key areas under the ECSS will be more adaptable to future environmental changes than the EPS. This new framework can effectively enhance both ecological function and carbon sequestration, providing effective support for policymakers in landscape management and low-carbon development in other regions facing similar challenges. In the meantime, more caution is needed for the possible limitations, such as without adequate consideration of uncertainties of changes in population, land use, and economy in the future.
Given the background of global warming, carbon emission reduction has become a topic of global importance. Land use change not only influences carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems directly, but ...it also indirectly affects anthropogenic carbon emissions, which occur more frequently in coastal regions. Based on data of energy consumption, industrial products, waste, soil organic carbon, and vegetation, together with land use images of five typical years, this paper calculated the total carbon emissions in coastal Jiangsu, China, assigned the detailed carbon emission items to different land use types, and optimized land use structure to low carbon emissions using the Linear Programming Model. It was found that carbon emission intensity in coastal Jiangsu was much higher than the average for China as a whole, and that energy consumption contributed most to local carbon emissions with the contribution from animals second. Urban land accounted for the most concentrated and highest intensity of carbon emissions. Between 1985 and 2010, the transfer of cropland to built-up land accounted for the largest percentage of the total transferred area and contributed most to the increase of carbon emissions. In particular, the limitation of urban land will play a key role in carbon emission reduction. Our optimized land use structure can control and decrease carbon emissions effectively and thus, it is an important tool worth the consideration of land managers and policy makers.
In order to assess the implementation of China's National General Land Use Plan (1997–2010), this study combined conformance-based and performance-based criteria. The conformance analysis was carried ...out by contrasting outcomes with planning goals. Regarding the performance-based criteria, this study focuses on the role of decision-making elements in plan implementation, such as subsequent plans relevance to the plan being evaluated, policies developed to implement the plan being assessed, and, local government's strategic response to the implementation of subsequent plans. This study highlights the critical role of uncertainty, as well as the structure related to the plan implementation. The results show that the National General Land Use Plan (1997–2010) conformed and performed poorly, and failed to achieve its goals. This study also indicates that the failure of the plan implementation was a result of uncertainty, difficulty in coordination, policy bugs and redundant governance, and weak plan implementation monitoring.
•China's National General Plan has conformed and performed poorly, and has not been successful.•Conformance- and performance-based criteria are complements, rather than substitutes for each other.•Redundant governance hindered the success of the plan implementation.•Attention to uncertainty and implementation structure facilitates plan implementation analysis.•It is beneficial to distinguish between ‘being implemented’ and ‘being implemented successfully’.
Plastic greenhouses are an important hallmark of agricultural progress. To meet the growing demand for vegetable and food, the amount of plastic greenhouses has increased significantly over the past ...few decades. Remote sensing is considered as a promising data source for taking inventory and monitoring plastic greenhouses for managing modern agriculture. However, a systematic catalog of number and spatial distribution of plastic greenhouses is mostly inexistent. This is primarily due to the complex land surface characteristics and seasonal changes, which make automated classification based on EO data challenging. Current approaches generally suffer from the susceptibility of approaches toward thresholds and changes in the phenological stage. Besides, they often require an extensive training of models, however, often the necessary amount of training data is inexistent. To address these issues, we suggest an adaptable and universal plastic greenhouse mapping method based on very high spatial resolution optical satellite data (GaoFen-2 image) with a three-step procedure. A plastic greenhouse gathering area (100 km 2 ) is selected for the development of the initial method. We receive a very competitive mapping accuracy 97.34% and the likelihood of plastic greenhouses being mapped correctly reaches to 95.20%. Subsequently, we transfer it to a much larger area (2025 km 2 ) featuring a different phenological stage and different surrounding patterns. The stable mapping accuracy proves the validity of our approach.
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•The YREB region is transforming from a natural river basin to a consumption-oriented economic belt.•The YREB region exacerbates the gap between the north and the south through ...interregional trade.•The PHH effect held in 2002 in the cross reach linkage, but had disappeared by 2012.•Consumption structure and carbon intensity drive the deceleration of interregional outsourcing.
As the largest river in Asia with masses of population and industries along the riverside, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) produces tremendous carbon emissions. However, trade-induced environmental impacts of such a megaregion with multiple geographic linkages are always neglected in the river’s environmental policies, even as it is expected to change dynamically in the context of a transition period. By incorporating the megaregion scale into the multiregional input and output framework, our main findings are as follows: (1) The YREB region transformed from a traditional river basin to a comprehensive consumption-oriented economic belt. The proportions of the YREB region’s embodied emissions in local and international linkages are decreasing, while the proportions of that in cross reach and interregional linkages are increasing; (2) The YREB region exacerbates the gap between the north and the south by importing carbon emissions from the carbon-intensive north and exporting to the south with low emission intensity; (3) The Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH) effect held in 2002 in the cross reach linkage, while disappeared in 2012 due to changes in development and consumption patterns.
Through structural decomposition analysis, this study detects driving factors of embodied emissions changes in multi linkages, and provides coordinating mitigation actions for the environmental governance of large river basins with comprehensive economic linkages.
ABSTRACTIndustrial land status, encompassing quantity, distribution and efficiency, is pivotal in urban planning and sustainable development. However, obtaining detailed and up-to-date industrial ...land maps poses a significant challenge in many developing countries due to rapid urban expansion. Furthermore, the identification and efficiency assessment of industrial land at the parcel scale are rarely undertaken. To address these challenges, our study proposes an innovative approach to map industrial land, categorize its types and assess its efficiency at the parcel scale. We select Shenzhen, one of China’s largest industrial cities, as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. Our results unveil several key findings: (1) Shenzhen’s urban area was meticulously segmented into 15,591 multi-size socio-economic parcels, of which 5,738 were identified as industrial parcels (IPs); (2) IPs were further categorized into three distinct types: office industrial parcels at 69.47%, manufacturing industrial parcels at (6.08%) and comprehensive industrial parcels at 24.45%; (3) Their efficiency was classified into four levels: low (20.30%), middle (35.73%), fine (35.97%) and high (8.00%). Efficient IPs were predominately concentrated in the southwest, whereas other IPs clustered in the northwest. Our findings can provide valuable insights into industrial land identification, classification and efficiency evaluation at parcel scale.
Spatiotemporal variations of atmospheric CH4 from 2002 to 2016 across China were detected, based on the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) sixth-layer CH4 concentration. The CH4 concentration showed ...good consistency with the ground measurements of surface CH4 concentration from the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) (R2 = 0.83, p < 0.01), indicating that the remotely-sensed CH4 reflected the spatial and temporal variations of surface CH4 concentration. Across China, three hotspots of CH4 concentration were found in northern Xinjiang, the northeast of Inner Mongolia/Heilongjiang, and the Norgay plateau in northwest Sichuan. The CH4 concentration showed obviously seasonal variations, with the maximum CH4 concentration occurring in summer, followed by the autumn, winter, and spring. Furthermore, the CH4 concentration showed significantly increasing trends across China, with the rate of increase ranging from ~0.29 to 0.62 ppb·month−1, which would bring a 0.0019~0.014 mK potential rise in surface temperature response over China. In particular, the most rapidly increasing rates occurred in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, while relatively low rates occurred in southeast China.
As China has undergone rapid urbanization, the share of land dedicated to urban residential use has increased and changed in space accordingly. The rate at which cities expand their urban footprints, ...however, is not simply a function of population growth, but rather influenced by a number of factors. This study investigated the spatial pattern of urban residential land (URL) in China and factors that drive the expansion of URL on a national scale. Taking a sample from 345 cities, the study applied spatial autocorrelation and spatial regression analysis for discovering China’s URL changes from 2000 to 2016. The study indicated a continuous growth and obvious spatial agglomeration of URL. These were particularly significant in Eastern regions of China, where the highly agglomerated areas were gradually concentrating and expanding in the Yangtze River Delta region, and the coastal area along Shandong and Hebei provinces over time. This contrasted with a spatial de-agglomeration of URL in Northeastern cities. The study also revealed that the effects of economic agglomeration, residential investment, public infrastructure development and government-planned actions by means of urban construction land planning also play significant roles in influencing URL expansion. Despite complexity of these impacts, policy decision making might look to transform growth-oriented development while promoting sustainable land use and livable residential environment beyond the scale of a city.
Exploring the impact of land urbanization on ecosystem health is of great significance for alleviating ecological degradation and achieving regional sustainable development. This paper employs the ...methods of bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis and spatial panel Dubin model to assess the impact of land urbanization on ecosystem health during 2000–2019, taking 124 counties in Yangtze River Delta Urban agglomerations (YRD), China, as the study area. The results show that ecosystem health exhibits spatial clustering across the counties in YRD. Land urbanization has a significant negative spatial spillover effect on ecosystem health. Specifically, as the land urbanization increases by 1 %, ecosystem health will decline by approximately 0.1043 % in YRD, the direct effect and feedback effect are −0.0652 % and − 0.0391 %, respectively. In addition, GDP per capita and urban compactness are benefit for ecosystem health. These findings may offer insights into the decision-making for urban sustainable development.
•There was a spatial opposition between land urbanization level and the status of ecosystem health.•A spatial spillover effect existed between land urbanization and ecosystem health across counties.•Being surrounded by highly land urbanized units resulted in negative effects on a unit's ecosystem health.•GDP per capita and urban compactness were benefit for ecosystem health.
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