Se propone un diseño de localización de torres para detección de incendios forestales, tomando como área de prueba la región Metropolitana de Chile Central, en Sudamérica. Como primer paso se efectuó ...la delimitación de zonas críticas de ocurrencia a partir de los registros históricos de incendios y una posterior delimitación de cuadrantes basados en la grilla empleada por la Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF) de Chile para el registro de incendios. Posteriormente, se evaluó espacial y temporalmente los problemas potenciales de ocurrencia y propagación de incendios forestales mediante la determinación de "prioridades de protección" en el área de estudio. Con el fin de minimizar la cantidad de localizaciones opcionales para el emplazamiento de torres, se desarrolló un modelo combinatorio automatizado en SIG que evalúa el conjunto de posibilidades y permite determinar la cantidad mínima de torres capaz de cubrir al menos un 75 % de la superficie, en primera prioridad, de protección al interior de cada cuadrante. Los resultados indican que la región Metropolitana de Chile contiene 16 zonas críticas de ocurrencia. Por otro lado, el sistema propuesto requiere de ocho puntos de observación para cubrir en promedio, un 79,3 % de la superficie de primera prioridad contenida por los cuadrantes y un 46,8 % en áreas de igual calificación a nivel regional. Se destaca la flexibilidad del modelo propuesto al ser replicable en diferentes zonas y escalas, permitiendo además de la incorporación de diversas restricciones previas a su evaluación.
Political boundaries often do not coincide with ecological boundaries, and it is common for the same physical geographical unit to span multiple countries. Exploring establishing transboundary ...protected areas and ecological networks can effectively protect the integrity of natural ecosystems separated by political boundaries. Based on the integrated evaluation of ecosystem services function, ecological vulnerability, and ecosystem integrity, this study explored a methodological system for evaluating ecological protection priority areas in transboundary areas and selected the Altai Mountains, which span four countries, contain China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia, as a typical case to conduct empirical research. The study found that the extremely important areas of ecosystem services function, ecological vulnerability, and ecosystem integrity showed transboundary contiguous characteristics. Furthermore, weighted overlay analysis identified the spatial distribution pattern of ecological protection priority areas in the Altai Mountains. We suggested establishing transboundary protected areas in the four countries’ transboundary areas, building the identified ecological protection priority areas and existing protected areas into a transboundary protected area network, and deepening a multi-party transboundary protection cooperation mechanism. This study can provide a theoretical and practical reference to achieve the 2030 biodiversity conservation goals.
Identifying and protecting key sites of ecological assets and improving spatial connectivity and accessibility are important measures taken to protect ecological diversity. This study takes Guangxi ...as the research area. Based on the gross ecosystem product (GEP), the ecological source is identified, and the initial ecological network (EN) is constructed by identifying the ecological corridor with the minimum cumulative resistance model. The internal defects of the initial ecological network are extracted using the circuit theory, the priority areas for restoration and protection with clear spatial positions are determined according to the complex network analysis, and the network’s performance before and after optimization is comprehensively evaluated. The results show that 456 initial ecological sources and 1219 ecological corridors have been identified, forming the initial ecological network of Guangxi. Based on the circuit theory, 168 ecological barriers, 83 ecological pinch points, and 71 ecological stepping stones were extracted for network optimization. After optimizing the ecological network, there are 778 ecological sources with a total area of 73,950.56 km2 and 2078 ecological corridors with a total length of 23,922.07 km. The GEP of the optimized structure is 13.33% higher than that of the non-optimized structure. The priority areas for protection are distributed in a large area, and the attached GEP reaches USD 118 billion, accounting for 72% of the total GEP attached to the optimized ecological source area. The priority areas for restoration are scattered in small patches, with a GEP of USD 19.27 billion. The robustness and connectivity of the optimized ecological network have been improved obviously. This study attempts to identify key sites of ecological assets and the priority regions for restoration and conservation using genuine geographical location and reference materials for regional ecological network optimization and implementation.
Land scarcity and land-hungry are two important terms are used for a highly populous country like Bangladesh. The only hilly area of Bangladesh, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), is a forest ...dominated area of the country is also experiencing forest area and other land area changes. With the advent of time, changes of different factors like geophysical, socioeconomic, proximity to built infrastructure or climatic are producing changes in the spatial pattern of land use of the CHT. In this regard, it is crucially important to crystallize the dynamics of land cover changes for scrutinizing the underlying causes of land cover change patterns in the Hill Tracts area. With this view in mind, in the present study, we developed two scenarios (from 2010 to 2040) of land cover change like business as usual, plus environmental protection priority and predicted the future land cover in the study area. We employed the Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model to simulate the land uses based on the driving mechanisms. The findings implied a huge increment of built-up area with shrinkage of cultivated lands, forestry area and grassland from 2010 to 2040 under the business as usual scenario. While, under the environmental protection priority scenario, forestry areas, grassland, and built-up areas would expand with the contraction of cultivated land, and water areas mainly. The research findings offer worthwhile information for policymakers to conserve the environment and economic growth in a more sustainable way.
•Different LUC factors have significant influence on land cover change in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh.•DLS model simulation results exhibits cultivated land loss and steep expansion of built-up areas.•Based on environmental protection priority scenario, a slight increase of forestry areas would be seen from 2010 to 2040.
Urbanization is the development trend of all countries in the world, but it has caused considerable ecological problems that need to be alleviated by building ecological security patterns. This study ...took Ningbo as an example to construct and optimize an ecological security pattern. We analyzed land use types, normalized difference vegetation index, and landscape connectivity for ecological sources selection. In constructing the resistance surface, we considered natural and socio-economic factors. On this basis, we identified ecological corridors based on a minimum cumulative resistance model. Finally, the ecological security pattern was optimized through space syntax. Results showed that Ningbo has 18 ecological sources, with an area of 3051.27 km2 and 29 ecological corridors, with a length of 1172.18 km. Among them, 11 are first-level, 10 are second-level, and 8 are third-level corridors. After optimization, the area and protection cost of the ecological security pattern were significantly reduced, which can effectively alleviate the trade-off between ecological protection and economic development. This research can provide a reference for the construction and optimization of ecological security patterns and has reference significance for ecological protection in rapidly urbanized areas.
Determining the priority of infrastructure assets is an important problem in critical infrastructure protection. However, relatively few studies have attempted to address the problem. This paper ...presents a quantitative approach for determining the elements of a railway infrastructure that have the highest protection priority. The train stations in a railway infrastructure (nodal elements) and railway lines (linear elements) are modeled as nodes and ties, respectively, in a social network diagram, which is used in centricity analysis to explore the relative importance of train stations. A modified gravity model is presented to assess the importance of railway lines. The feasibility of the proposed methodology is demonstrated using the railway infrastructure of Mainland China. The methodology can help practitioners and policy makers obtain a better understanding of the importance and protection priority of railway infrastructure assets as well as other critical infrastructures that have network topologies.
In Southwest China, five Nature Reserves (NRs) (Mangkang, Baimaxueshan, Yunling, Habaxueshan, and Yunlongtianchi) play a key role in protecting the endemic and endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey ...(YSM) (
Rhinopithecus bieti
). However, increasing human activities threaten its habitats and corridors. We used a GIS-based Niche Model to delineate potential core habitats (PCHs) of the YSMs and a Linkage Mapper corridor simulation tool to restore potential connectivity corridors (PCCs), and defined five scenarios. A normalized importance value index (NIVI) was established to identify the protection priority areas (PPAs) for the YSMs for five scenarios. The results indicated that locations of the habitats and corridors were different in the five scenarios, thereby influencing the distribution of the PPAs and protection network of the YSMs. The NIVI value of Baimaxueshan nature reserve was 1 in the five scenarios, which implied the maximum importance. There were only 7 PCHs and 16 PCCs (with the longest average length of 223.13 km) which were mainly located around 5 NRs in scenario III. The protection network of the YSMs was composed of 16 PCHs, 18 PCCs, and 5 NRs. Under each scenario, most of the PCHs and the PCCs were located in the south of the study area. The five NRs only covered 2 PPAs of the YSMs. We suggest that the southern part of the study area needs to be strictly protected and human activities should be limited. The area of the five NRs should be expanded to maximize protection of the YSMs in the future.
Basing on the distribution data from field investigation, using GIS and ecological niche model (MAXENT) to simulate, analysis, and to reveal the potential distributions, patterns and determinant ...factors of Amygdalus mongolica in the Central Asian Desert. Buffer analysis, based on the appending of average occurrence probability of A.mongolica in different areas and the land use (principal highway, railway, and residents) data of our study area, was carried out for confirming the protection priority of different populations. Results show: (1) the potential distributions concentrated in Alax and East Gobi of Mongolia, in bayannur, Alxa Zuoqi, Ordos Plateau and western XiLin GuoLengmeng of Inner Mongolia, in central and eastern areas of Hexi Corridor, in northern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Shaanxi province, and in the part areas of northern Heibei province; (2) the distribution-influencing factors of A.mongolica are mainly the extreme temperature and precipitation: the extremely low temperature and the most dought season precipitation; (3) the disturbance of human activities to suitable habitats of A. mongolica was evaluated quantitatively, and the obtained core and buffer areas of reserves, and can guide in situ conservation and protection priority of different populations of this species very well.
CHANG, H.-K.; LIOU, J.-C., and CHEN, W.-W., 2012. Protection priority in the coastal environment using a hybrid AHP-TOPSIS method on the Miaoli Coast, Taiwan. Coastal erosion often happens around the ...island of Taiwan because of strong waves from typhoons in the summer. The problem of beach erosion cannot be completely solved at this time due to insufficient government budgets. Prioritization of coastal protection should be made yearly to match engineering requirements and annual official budgets. This paper proposes both analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods to prioritize the protection of the coastal environment on the Miaoli Coast of Taiwan. The weights of three main criteria (engineering safety, ecology, and coastal landscape) and their subcriteria are determined through the AHP method. Twenty-two segments of the Miaoli Coast are ranked according protection priority by the TOPSIS method. This multipart methodology can help decision makers prioritize coastal engineering and environmental efforts. This procedure also enables researchers to put more expert knowledge together, allowing more precise decisions and moderating personal judgments.
Overgrazing caused by overabundant ungulates exceeding the land carrying capacity induces catastrophic ecological problems. Installation of ungulate‐proof fences is an effective management tool to ...protect plants from overgrazing. However, an efficient framework to prioritize conservation targets (i.e., plant species to be protected by the fences and areas to install the fences) for maintaining plant diversity under limited resources has yet to be formulated. At a regional scale, the possibility of plants being encountered and grazed by ungulates would increase when the habitats of plants and that of foraging ungulates overlap. We tested the utility of incorporating the encounter tendency as well as the palatability of each plant species to identify areas for preferential installation of fences to secure regional plant diversity. We conducted a plant survey in five 3 × 3 m quadrats at 30 stands at Minakami, Gunma, Japan, and recorded the presence or absence of ungulate grazing scars for all plant shoots within a height of 25–200 cm at each quadrat. We developed a regression model in which the presence or absence of a grazing scar was explained by the susceptibility of a plant species to grazing (palatability) and the susceptibility of the quadrats to visitation by ungulates (visitability). The encounter tendency of respective species was then evaluated based on the visitability of quadrats and the frequency distribution of their shoots across the quadrats. Of 211 plant species examined, 121 showed significant values of either or both palatability and encounter tendency, whereas the two metrics were mutually independent. In addition, using a simulation model, we showed that the median of the number of species lost in a region would be 1.8‐fold smaller over 20 yr when considering both the palatability and the encounter tendency to identify areas for the installation of ungulate‐proof fences as compared to considering only palatability. We suggest that accounting for both palatability and encounter tendency would greatly improve our capacity to identify priority areas for the installation of ungulate‐proof fences to efficiently ensure the persistence of regional plant diversity.
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