Urbanization has eco-environmental consequences; among which are effects on the urban thermal environment, which have drawn extensive attention especially in metropolitan regions having intensive ...population and high building density. In this study, the variation of the thermal environment during the urbanization process from 2001 to 2009 in the Beijing metropolitan region was evaluated using the spatial Lorenz curve and distribution index. In addition, the effects of landscape composition and spatial configuration on the thermal environment were investigated using correlation analysis and piecewise linear regression. The urban heat island (UHI) was found to be much more significant in summer than in spring, autumn and winter. Furthermore, the magnitude of the urban thermal environment in Beijing has increased during the process of urbanization. The suburban areas of Beijing, including the new urban development zone and ecological conservation zone, have increased the magnitude of the thermal environment. However, the opposite effect has occurred in the center of Beijing, including the core functional zone and urban function extended zone. Landscape types such as built-up areas and barren land make the most significant contribution to the thermal environment, whereas ecological land plays a significant role in mitigating the UHI. When the coverage of ecological land exceeded 70% (25km2) of the total land area, the cooling efficiency of this landscape type was relatively obvious, and the shape index and fragmentation index of landscape configuration both had a significantly positive correlation (0.594 and 0.510 Pearson's coefficients, respectively) with average land surface temperature. The Pearson's coefficient between the ecological land proportion and the average land surface temperature was 0.614 (P<0.01); this value was higher than that for the effects of the spatial configuration, indicating that landscape composition affects the thermal environment more than does spatial configuration.
•LST dynamic was examined in Beijing during 2001–2009.•LST increased averagely in the whole metropolitan area but decreased in city center.•Built-up areas and barren land contribute most to UHI.•Cooling effects of ecological land is obvious with the proportion above 70%.•LST is determined more by landscape composition than spatial configuration.
Urban heat island (UHI) has become an urban eco-environmental problem globally. Land surface temperature (LST) is widely used to quantify UHI. This study used Shenzhen, a southern coastal city in ...China, as an example to explore the relationship between spatial variation of LST in different seasons and the influencing factors in five dimensions, integrating the methods of ordinary least-squares regression, stepwise regression, all-subsets regression, and hierarchical partitioning analysis. The results showed that the most important factor affecting spatial heterogeneity of LST in summer was the normalized difference build-up index (53.62%, for contributing rate), whereas in the transition season the most important factor was the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (47.84%). In winter the construction land percentage and NDVI (26.84% and 25.56%, respectively) were the most influential. Artificial surface and green space had a dominant effect on LST spatial differentiation. Landscape configuration and diversity were not the dominant influencing factors in summer or in the transition season. Furthermore, the independent contribution rate of the Shannon diversity index (SHDI) reached 8.79% in the transition season, while in winter, the independent contribution rates of SHDI and the landscape shape index were 8.52% and 3.45%, respectively. The influence of landscape diversity and configuration factors tended to increase as LST reduced, while the contribution rate of the important factors such as artificial surface and green space decreased significantly. These relationships indicate that the influence of landscape configuration and diversity factors on LST is relatively weak, and can be easily concealed by the influence of landscape components, especially when the spatial variation of LST is not strong. These findings can help to develop UHI adaptation strategies based on local conditions.
•Multiple statistical methods are linked to quantify LST driving forces.•Dominant factors for LST seasonal variation are identified through HP analysis.•Mechanism of LST variation becomes more complicated with the decreasing of LST.
•Analyzed more than 25,000 questionnaires of willingness to pay (WTP) for the nature of the Tibetan Plateau.•Chinese people's WTP was 1,080.95 CNY/year.•Geographic diversity on the payment for ES ...exists in China.•People's knowledge and attitude directly drove the payment amount.
Ecosystem Services (ES) are common-pool resources that can be valued by people's willingness to pay (WTP). In contrast to place-based WTP research at the community-level, the stakeholders tend to be geographically diverse, and the benefits are not spatially apparent on the national level. Aiming to find the geographical diversity of the WTP for ES at the large scale, this study implemented an online survey of more than 25,000 samples to detect the WTP of Chinese people for water conservation, soil retention, carbon fixation, pollution decomposition, biodiversity conservation, and aesthetic existence of the Tibetan Plateau. The results showed the top limit of payments was 1,080.95 CNY/year/capita on average, and people would like to pay 172.40 CNY/year/capita for water conservation, which is the highest among the six ES. The percent of people “Aged 16–35”, “Government agency staff” and “Know WTP” influenced payments at provincial level. On an individual level, people's knowledge and attitudes directly drove the payment amounts, as well as their ecosystem management decisions. Consequently, geographical diversity of the payment for ES exists in China, and in contrast to the objective social structure and spatial accessibility of ES, people's knowledge and attitudes were the main driving forces of this geographical diversity. These findings suggest that a bottom-up adaptive governance approach is encouraged for managing common pool resources in developing countries.
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Background and Aims: Despite an early insight into the risk factors of uterine fibroids (UFs), there is still controversy about the roles of blood lipids and apolipoprotein on UFs. Therefore, to ...provide more reliable evidence, we investigated the causal effect of blood lipids and apolipoprotein on the risk of UFs through Mendelian randomization (MR). Method: We utilized the large genome-wide association studies of blood lipids and apolipoprotein as instruments and integrated them in the inverse-variance-weighted (IVW) model in two-sample MR to investigate their causal relationship in large sample sizes. To eliminate potential pleiotropy, we listed a conclusive table of genes related to confounding factors, such as body mass index, waist circumference, blood pressure, glucose, hypertension, the metabolic syndrome and smoking and removed the repeated SNPs in the exposure data.To adjust for multiple comparisons, the statistical significance of the MR effect estimates was evaluated in a false discovery rate correlation of less than 5%. Neither pleiotropy nor heterogeneity was reported in all MR sensitivity analysis, including IVW, MR-Egger, simple median, weighted median, weighted mode and Mendelian Randomization Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier methods. Results: Total triglycerides, very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) cholesterol, including large, medium and small VLDL particles and free cholesterol in large VLDL cholesterol showed positive association with UFs. Meanwhile, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), apolipoprotein A1, free cholesterol in small and medium VLDL and total cholesterol are not statistically related to the development of UFs. Conclusion: Exposure to various aberrant blood lipids increases the risk of UFs, providing genetic evidence for the vital role of aberrant lipid levels in the pathogenesis of UFs. Meanwhile, our results provided genetic insights suggesting intervention in blood lipids might be a prospective strategy in the early prevention and treatment of UFs.
Context
Constructing a sustainable landscape pattern from the perspective of landscape sustainability is scientifically built on the clarification of the formation mechanisms of landscape services ...and their relationships. However, the trade-offs and synergies of landscape services have regional heterogeneity, and their influencing factors are largely unknown in polar ecosystem. The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau is a unique but fragile ecosystem, and its landscape services are vital components to the sustainability in this specific polar region.
Objectives
This study sought to understand the landscape service relationships, their dynamics and influencing factors, and achieve a sustainable landscape management in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau.
Methods
In this work, we evaluated the spatiotemporal distribution and relationships of multiple landscape services including soil retention (SR), water yield (WY), habitat quality (HQ), crop supply (CS) and livestock supply (LS). We further identified temperature, elevation, population size, land use and land cover (LULC) as influencing factors on landscape services relationships within specific landscape gradients.
Results
Our results show that: (1) SR, WY and HQ decreased significantly from the southeast to the northwest. (2) Regulating services-supporting services are mainly identified as synergies, and CS–HQ and CS–LS are manifested as trade-offs. (3) Geophysical factors (temperature, altitude) have impact on the distribution of CS and the trade-off and synergistic dynamics of WY–HQ, increased population size enhances CS–HQ trade-offs, while between supporting and regulating services show trade-offs in high-coverage grassland and unused land.
Conclusions
The quantitative assessment of landscape services and relationships provides the basis for sustainable landscape management in the context of national policies and climate change.
Ecological security patterns (ESPs) aim to provide an effective spatial approach for maintaining urban ecological security based on the relationship between landscape patterns and ecological ...processes. However, the methods of selecting ecological security sources and evaluating resistance surfaces for ESPs construction are not well developed and lack consideration of land degradation and spatial heterogeneity. Using Shenzhen City, a fast-growing city in a rapidly urbanizing region, as a case study area, this study evaluated two types of land degradation risk for ecological land: type transformation risk and functional damage risk. Both two kinds of risk were combined with ecological functional importance, which was composed of habitat quality and landscape connectivity, so as to quantify the comprehensive reserve value of ecological land to identify the ecological security sources. Ecological corridors were established with the application of remotely-sensed impervious surface area in the ecological resistance surface evaluation. In all, 477.43 km2 ecological land were identified as ecological security sources, with 278.1 km and 197.5 km for the length of group corridors and landscape corridors respectively. The ecological corridors spatially presented a radiation pattern of one axis and three strips. The majority of both ecological security sources and corridors was located within the existing ecological protection boundary, confirming its ecological significance. This study provided an effective quantification framework to identify urban ESPs, and ESPs mapping could make a fundamental support to urban planning.
As an important theme in global climate change and urban sustainable development, the changes of land surface temperature (LST) and surface urban heat island (SUHI) have been more and more focused by ...urban ecologists. This study used land-use data to identify the urban-rural areas in 285 cities in China and comparatively analyzed LST in urban-rural areas with the perspective of spatial-temporal dynamics heterogeneity. The results showed that, 98.9% of the cities exhibited SUHI effect in summer nighttime and the effect was stronger in northern cities than that in southern cities. In 2010, the mean SUHI intensity was the largest in summer daytime, with 4.6% of the cities having extreme SUHI of over 4°C. From 2001 to 2010, the nighttime LST of most cities increased more quickly in urban areas compared with rural areas, with an increasing tendency of the urban-rural LST difference. The difference in the urban- rural LST change rate was concentrated in the range of 0–0.1°C/year for 68.0% of cities in winter and 70.8% of cities in summer. For the higher LST increasing in urban areas compared with rural areas, there were more cities in summer than winter, indicating that the summer nighttime was the key temporal period for SUHI management. Based on the change slope of urban-rural LST, cities were clustered into four types and the vital and major zones for urban thermal environment management were identified in China. The vital zone included cities in Hunan, Hubei and other central rising provinces as well as the Beibu Gulf of Guangxi Province. The major zone included most of the cities in Central Plain Urban Agglomeration, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. These results can provide scientific basis for SUHI adaptation in China.
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•98.9% of the cities in China showed UHI in summer nighttime.•Most cities in China have higher increasing rate of nighttime LST in urban areas.•Cities varied in LST characteristics have been classified into four types in China.•The vital zone and major zone for UHI management are identified in China.
•Ecosystem health response to LUCC was assessed.•Spatial neighboring effect on ecosystem services was focused.•Ecosystem physical health declined in most towns.•Ecosystem vigor mainly affected the ...physical health.
Quantitative analysis of the response of ecosystem health to rural land use change is required to comprehend the human-nature coupling mechanism and to explore the process of global environmental change, which can interpret the ecological effects of regional land use and land cover change comprehensively. However, the existing regional ecosystem health assessment largely ignored either the internal connection of ecosystem health to land use patterns or the internal representation of ecosystem services to ecosystem health. Using Lijiang City of China as a study area, the average normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), landscape metrics, and ecosystem elasticity coefficient based on different land use types were used as quantitative indicators. Then the coefficient of spatial neighboring effect was introduced to characterize the adjacency effect on ecosystem services, and to generate the index of integrated ecosystem health. The results showed the change of land use was close to 30% at county level from 1986 to 2006, and forest land was the primary land use type. With respect to the declining physical health of ecosystems in all the four counties, the integrated health experienced a slight increase in Lijiang County. The vast majority of towns’ ecosystem physical health and integrated health declined, while more than 70% of towns did not change distinctly. Ecosystem physical health had distinct influence on the integrated ecosystem health, and ecosystem vitality was the main factor affecting the condition of physical health. Emphasized in the interconnection of pattern and process, this study provided an ecosystem health approach to assessing the integrated ecological effects of regional land use change.
•Terrain and human activity intensity were integrated to construct resistance surface.•SCWT and KDE were applied to identify ecological corridors with widths.•Restoration coefficient was defined and ...used to extract key restoration areas.
Ecological corridors are effective to prevent ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss through promoting the connection among discrete habitat patches. Identifying ecological corridors is of great importance for biodiversity conservation and landscape planning. Previous studies mainly focused on the directions of ecological corridors among habitat patches and the boundaries of ecological corridors were usually subjectively identified. In this study a new approach integrating spatial continuous wavelet transform and kernel density estimation was proposed to objectively identify the width thresholds of ecological corridors in the megacity of Beijing City, with the application of InVEST model to extract core habitat patches, and constructing the ecological resistance surface based on natural conditions and human activities. The restoration coefficient was also defined and applied to determine the key restoration areas. The results showed that the total area of core habitat patches in Beijing City was 3652.75 km2, with 1414.67 km2 for ecological corridors, mainly distributed in the western and northern mountainous areas. 36 key restoration areas were also extracted, mainly located in the narrow areas with large resistance. Identifying the range and key restoration areas of ecological corridors can provide spatial guidelines for ecological conservation and restoration, thus ensuring regional ecological security in megacities.
Context
Spatial planning system needs the support of approaches toward achieving sustainability, with sustainable landscape pattern (SLP) for one potential spatial approach. However, the scientific ...definition of SLP has not been clarified in previous studies, and the support of SLP for spatial planning is also few summarized.
Objectives
The scientific definition and conceptual connotation of SLP were proposed, and its application status and development directions of theory and practice in spatial planning were further summarized.
Methods
We systematically reviewed the literature on landscape sustainability, urban growth boundary, ecological network, green infrastructure, ecological security pattern, ecological red line and others close to SLP, and qualitatively summarized the key theoretical and practical support of SLP for spatial planning.
Results
SLP is defined as a certain combination of composition and configuration of landscape elements that enables social-ecological processes to sustainably provide stable ecosystem services for promoting human well-being in a particular region. SLP effectively supports spatial planning to determine planning targets, analyze spatial patterns, and compare and select schemes by assessing target landscape elements, identifying key spatial areas, and simulating future development scenarios. It is proposed that frontier concepts (i.e. spatial resilience, metacoupling framework and landscape multifunctionality) provide new research perspectives for SLP, and that SLP can also be applied to ecological restoration, urban agglomeration coordinated development, and nature-based solution in the future.
Conclusions
Clarifying the scientific connotation of SLP can provide theoretical and methodological support for spatial planning practice and also a spatial approach for sustainable development.
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