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Rapid land-use change detection (LUCD) is pivotal for refined urban planning and management. In this paper, we investigate LUCD through learning embeddings of points of interest (POIs) from multiple temporalities. There are several prominent challenges: (1) the co-occurrence problem of multi-temporal POIs, (2) the heterogeneity of POI categorization, and (3) The lack of human-crafted labels. Therefore, multi-temporal POIs need to be aligned in the embedding space for effective LUCD. This study proposes a multi-temporal POI embedding (MT-POI2Vec) technique for LUCD in a fully unsupervised manner. In MT-POI2Vec, we first utilize random walks in POI networks to capture their single-period co-occurrence patterns; then, we leverage manifold learning to capture (1) single-period categorical semantics of POIs to enforce semantically similar POI embedding to be close and (2) cross-period categorical semantics to align multi-temporal POI embedding in a unified embedding space. We conducted experiments in Shenzhen, China, which demonstrates that the proposed method is effective. Compared with several baseline models, MT-POI2Vec can better align multi-temporal POIs and thus achieve higher performance in LUCD. In addition, our model can effectively identify areas with unchanged land use and land use changes in residential and industrial areas at a fine scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient geographical maps are our window into the past for understanding the spatial dynamics of last centuries. This paper proposes a novel approach to address this problem using deep learning. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are today the state-of-the-art methods in handling a variety of problems in the fields of image processing. The Cassini map, created in the eighteenth century, is used to illustrate our methodology. This approach enables us to extract the surfaces of classes of lands in the Cassini map: forests, heaths, arboricultural, and hydrological. The evolution of land use between the end of the eighteenth century andtoday was quantified by comparison with Corine Land Cover (CLC) database. For the Rhone watershed, the results show that forests, arboriculture, and heaths are more extensive on the CLC map, in contrast to the hydrological network. These unprecedented results are new findings that reveal the major anthropo-climatic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s the government of Burkina Faso together with international donor organizations has pushed for increasing national rice production to cope with the country's food import dependency. This paper traces this development and illustrates that rice production in Burkina Faso is the outcome of interrelated global and local processes. Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Burkina Faso the paper sketches the historical, legal and socioeconomic conditions, challenges and practices behind the increasing rice production. Focusing on the Bagré Growth Pole Project, we describe how particular configurations of local, national and global connections and disconnections around the creation of a Burkinabe rice market are brought into being. A major point of the paper is to illustrate that combining systemic and processual theoretical perspectives is highly illuminating in this respect. Concretely, the paper achieves this by bringing into dialogue the telecoupling literature concerned with the globalization of land-use change and the geographies of marketization literature focusing on market-making practices. This allows understanding the rice market described as an ongoing and grounded process within a global systemic configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Separating the individual effects of climate variability and human activities on streamflow is more important than just knowing their combined effects. In this paper, using a scenario-based hydrological simulation approach, the streamflow changes caused by climate variability and two different types of human activities (i.e. land-use change and large reservoirs operations) as well as the contribution rates of these three factors over 272 sub-basins in the Yangtze river basin were quantified and compared among 5 different periods (i.e. 1988–1992 (P1), 1993–1997 (P2), 1998–2002 (P3), 2003–2007 (P4) and 2008–2012 (P5)). Results demonstrate that, at the annual scale, climate variability played a leading role in the change in outflow of most sub-basins. With regard to the seasonal variations in discharge at Datong station, climate factors played a predominant role during P1-P2 and P2-P3. Since the Three Gorges Reservoir began operating in 2003, the discharge was enhanced by reservoirs in January-May and reduced by reservoirs in July-December. Reservoir and climate factors codetermined seasonal streamflow change during P3-P4 and P4-P5. Land-use change made the smallest contribution to seasonal discharge fluctuations. This study can support decision-making in regional water resources planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban–rural fringe is a dynamic environment where urban expansion limits the provision of landscape services. Economic valuation of these services is proposed to quantify the impact of urbanisation and inform planners of the potential losses that attribute to these land-use changes. However, most evaluation methods remain controversial regarding shortcomings in providing reliable results. This study applies market price, contingent valuation and value transfer methods and compares their performance in assessing the economic impact of land-use changes on the urban–rural fringe of the Amstelland (the Netherlands). Results with these applied methods differ greatly due to their respective advantages in revealing use values or non-use values of landscape services and dependence on land-use change. Thus, results are sensitive to value types, the scarcity of landscape services, scale of the study area, and involved stakeholders. This paper reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of these methods in different planning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use change is a part and parcel of urbanization and is carried out by the active participation of people and their technology. But with significant land-use change over an area, the surrounding ecology also changes. Hence it is essential to assess and control the unabated resource consumption rate. This paper makes an attempt to study the change in land-use over a span of more than 25 years and calculate the present individual ecological footprint. Further, an effort has also been made to analyse the relationship that exists between changing land-use mix index and current individual ecological footprint. Though urbanization is a boon in developing countries, increasing land-use changes linked with increasing ecological footprints, as found in the study area, suggests that urbanization has been more exploitative than sustainable in nature having a detrimental effect on the environment. This problem needs to be addressed with sustainable environmental management plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth observation images are a powerful source of data about changes in our planet. Given the magnitude of global environmental changes taking place, it is important that Earth Science researchers have access to spatiotemporal reasoning tools. One area of particular interest is land-use change. Using data obtained from images, researchers would like to express abstractions such as ‘land abandonment’, ‘forest regrowth’, and ‘agricultural intensification’. These abstractions are specific types of land-use trajectories, defined as multi-year paths from one land cover into another. Given this need, this paper introduces a spatiotemporal calculus for reasoning about land-use trajectories. Using Allen’s interval logic as a basis, we introduce new predicates that express cases of recurrence, conversion and evolution in land-use change. The proposed predicates are sufficient and necessary to express different kinds of land-use trajectories. Users can build expressions that describe how humans modify Earth’s terrestrial surface. In this way, scientists can better understand the environmental and economic effects of land-use change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I seek to synthesize several different approaches to issues of urban land redevelopment and the built environment. The essay focuses on developments in the third and current historical wave of capitalist development. I describe the economic logic of land-use change with reference to both commercial and residential property. This logic has become intimately intertwined with global finance and this state of affairs has introduced new elements of fluidity and risk into the built environment. Issues of urban policy and the role of municipal authorities in shaping urban land markets are then considered. I describe how local government agencies increasingly pursue development projects in complex partnerships with representatives of the real-estate industry. In the second half of the paper, the overall argument is recast by reference to three important trends in regard to land-redevelopment and the built environment in third-wave cities, namely, the economic and architectural renaissance of central business districts, the widespread gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods, and the emergence of a new post-suburban phase of peripheral urban expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a spatial autoregressive (SAR) method-based cellular automata (termed SAR-CA) model to simulate coastal land use change, by incorporating spatial autocorrelation into transition rules. The model captures the spatial relationships between explained and explanatory variables and then integrates them into CA transition rules. A conventional CA model (LogCA) based on logistic regression (LR) was studied as a comparison. These two CA models were applied to simulate urban land use change of coastal regions in Ningbo of China from 2000 to 2015. Compared to the LR method, the SAR model yielded smaller accumulated residuals that showed a random distribution in fitting the CA transition rules. The better-fitting SAR model performed well in simulating urban land use change and scored an overall accuracy of 85.3%, improving on the LogCA model by 3.6%. Landscape metrics showed that the pattern generated by the SAR-CA model has less difference with the observed pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a computationally efficient meta-modeling approach to spatially explicit uncertainty and sensitivity analysis in a cellular automata (CA) urban growth and land-use simulation model. The uncertainty and sensitivity of the model parameters are approximated using a meta-modeling method called polynomial chaos expansion (PCE). The parameter uncertainty and sensitivity measures obtained with PCE are compared with traditional Monte Carlo simulation results. The meta-modeling approach was found to reduce the number of model simulations necessary to arrive at stable sensitivity estimates. The quality of the results is comparable to the full-order modeling approach, which is computationally costly. The study shows that the meta-modeling approach can significantly reduce the computational effort of carrying out spatially explicit uncertainty and sensitivity analysis in the application of spatio-temporal models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade ago, scholars such as Michael Woods suggested that mobilisation in response to development in rural spaces was the result of a redefinition of relations between individuals, communities and the State. This remains true with the rural representing a contested site characterised by debates concerning food and fibre, water and energy security. With the recent deployment of new energy technologies in areas traditionally used for agricultural production, increased confrontation and resistance over land use has forged unlikely alliances between farmers, environmentalists and concerned others, ultimately leading to the rise of a new form of rural citizenship. In the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) where resistance to burgeoning coal seam gas operations has become the customary response of many rural communities, environmentalists and concerned others are mobilising in support of farmers, who self-identify as modern-day stewards and are actively working to protect a resource hierarchy of water, land and soil against industries believed to be putting these at risk. Adopting a qualitative case-study approach, this paper examines how residents and supporters in the regional Shire of Narrabri in NSW have responded to what many see as competing land uses. We argue that values traditionally associated with stewardship and rurality are being revalorised by citizens to actively oppose the visions of the State, which seek to prioritise extractive development over other alternate futures. We contend that this rise in rural relations represents a significant shift in the notion of citizens as “inhabitants” and presents a new and enduring form of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Shanghai is a rapidly developing metropolitan area and concentrations of greenhouse gases are high. Carbon-sink and carbon-source estimation are of significance for carbon-emissions reduction. This paper describes the effect of land-use change on the variation of urban net carbon emissions, and discusses the probable spatiotemporal impact on the dynamics of carbon emissions using coupled SD (system dynamics) and CLUE-S (the conversion of land use and its effects at small regional extent) models. The results show that: increase in construction land and decrease in agricultural land have positive and negative effects on land-use emissions, respectively; under the Basic Policy scenario, total net carbon emissions will continue to increase, from 39.43 to 80.28 Mt, with a decreasing growth rate; the increase/decrease in carbon emissions occurs mainly in urban–rural fringes and source water areas; the conversion of all land-use types to construction land is the main carbon source, while the conversion of agricultural land to ecological land is the main carbon sink. Two land-use strategies are suggested for the mitigation of carbon emissions in Shanghai. It is also shown that the coupled models are suitable for simulating and predicting spatiotemporal city-level net carbon emissions and are applicable to similar cities in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improvements in geographical information systems, the wider availability of high-resolution digital data and more sophisticated econometric techniques have all contributed to increasing academic interest and activity in long-term impacts of transport infrastructure networks (TINs) on land use (LU). This paper provides a systematic review of recent empirical evidence from the USA, Europe and East Asia, classified regarding the type of transport infrastructure (road or rail), LU indicator (land cover, population or employment density, development type) and outcome (significance, relationship’s direction) as well as influential exogenous factors. Proximity to the rail network is generally associated with population growth (particularly soon after the development of railway infrastructure), conversion to residential uses and the development of higher residential densities. Meanwhile, proximity to the road network is frequently associated with increases in employment densities as well as the conversion of land to a variety of urban uses including commercial and industrial development. Compared with road infrastructure, the impact of rail infrastructure is often less significant for land cover or population and employment density change. The extent of TINs’ impact on LU over time can be explained by the saturation in TIN-related accessibility and LU development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analysing the impact of urban policy interventions on urban growth, land use and transport (LUT) is crucial for urban planners, transport planners and policy-makers, especially in rapidly growing cities. This paper presents a cellular automata-based land-use/transport interaction model – Metronamica-LUTI – for Jeddah that is used to analyse the impact of different proposed policy interventions under two urban growth scenarios for the period 2011–2031. Used as an integrated policy impact assessment tool, the model demonstrates a strong reciprocal relationship between LUT in Jeddah. This study shows that relevant spatial information and integrated policy impact assessment can provide rich insights into the interaction between LUT, the appropriate policy to consider in place and time which traditional planning practice and typical static urban models cannot do. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Urban growth and population growth are used in numerous models to determine their potential impacts on both the natural and the socio-economic systems. Cellular automata (CA) land-use models became popular for urban growth modelling since they predict spatial interactions between different land uses in an explicit and straightforward manner. A common deficiency of land-use models is that they only deal with abstract categories, while in reality, several activities are often hosted at one location (e.g. population, employment, agricultural yield, nature…). Recently, a multiple activity-based variable grid CA model was proposed to represent several urban activities (population and economic activities) within single model cells. The distance-decay influence rules of the model included both short- and long-distance interactions, but all distances between cells were simply Euclidean distances. The geometry of the real transportation system, as well as its interrelations with the evolving activities, were therefore not taken into account. To improve this particular model, we make the influence rules functions of time travelled on the transportation system. Specifically, the new algorithm computes and stores all travel times needed for the variable grid CA. This approach provides fast run times, and it has a higher resolution and more easily modified parameters than the alternative approach of coupling the activity-based CA model to an external transportation model. This paper presents results from one Euclidean scenario and four different transport network scenarios to show the effects on land-use and activity change in an application to Belgium. The approach can add value to urban scenario analysis and the development of transport- and activity-related spatial indicators, and constitutes a general improvement of the activity-based CA model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use control and planning instruments face new challenges amid growing pressure for urbanization and annexation of valuable agricultural land and natural areas. This paper presents the land-use change propensity map, which shows the local potential for specific land-use changes. Propensity is derived empirically on the basis of historical land-use changes, with an explicit evaluation of characteristics that contributed to land-use change. Each step in creating a propensity map is described: selecting data that best represents land-use changes, identifying potential drivers of land-use change and the statistical inference of their impact on land-use change on the basis of observed historical land-use changes. The resulting propensity for land-use change is represented in the form of a binary logit model that evaluates the probability of specific land-use changes. A series of propensity maps for the territory of the Tábor microregion in the Czech Republic was created to demonstrate the method. The scale of the propensity maps is 1:310,000, and they cover an area of 1002 km2. Each propensity map represents the specific propensity for conversion from non-urban uses to family, multi-family and individual recreation houses. The evaluated propensity can be further compared to existing or proposed land-use regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews approaches to measuring and managing the multiple ecosystem goods and services (ESS) provided by production landscapes. A synthesis of these approaches was used to analyse changes in supply of ESS in heavily cleared and fragmented production landscapes in south-east Australia. This included analysis of spatial and temporal trade-offs and synergies among multiple ESS. Spatially explicit, up-to-date and reliable information can be used to assess ESS supplied from different types of land uses and land cover and from different parts of a landscape. This can support effective management and payment systems for ESS in production landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface mining activities, exploitation of ore, and stripping and dumping of the overburden cause changes in the land cover and land use of a mine area. The area of land disturbance can be very large in the case of surface coal mining, due to the nature of the coal extraction process. Sustainable mining requires continuous monitoring of changes in land cover and land use induced by the mining activities. This is essentially important for identifying the long-term impacts of mining on theenvironment and on land cover in order to provide necessary mine closure andreclamation measures. In this sense, digital image classification provides apowerful tool for obtaining rigorous data, and reduces the cost of field measurements in time and money, particularly when dealing with large areas. Various remote sense data records and image classification techniques serve different features for numerous purposes. The selection of a suitable data and image classification method is significant for ensuring the effective use of information extracted from the satellite images, e.g. land-use classes. This paper proposes a methodology for identifying land-use change in surface coal mines using multi-temporal high-resolution satellite images. The methodology has been implemented for identifying, quantifying and analysing the spatial response of landscape to surface mining activities in the Goynuk, Bolu surface mine in Turkey, from 2004 to 2008. The methodology essentially entails (i) acquiring data, (ii) preprocessing the data, (iii)image classification using the maximum likelihood classification algorithm (iv) accuracy assessment and (v) change detection analysis depending on class-based approaches. The results show that the methodology can be utilised effectively in monitoring land-use change in surface coal mining areas. It also provides essential input for planning mine reclamation and closure activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to assess the impacts of agricultural land-use changes on biodiversity in Taihu Lake Basin, China, and to identify possible conservation strategies. We used the mean species abundance (MSA) approach, building on simple cause–effect relationships between environmental drivers and biodiversity impacts at the global level. Our assessment estimated that 21% of the original species in the undisturbed ecosystem were present in 2000. We also analysed and reviewed agricultural pressures at different spatial scales to enable the development of conservation strategies at regional and farm levels. This analysis showed, first, that intensive crop management is reflected by the amount of fertilisers applied. Policies and technologies aiming to reduce environmental impacts have been ineffective. Second, the abundance of semi-natural elements was found to be low and the fragmentation high. To link agricultural pressures to the MSA approach, we propose a multi-scale cause–effect approach, which can be linked to other land uses. This approach is useful to provide a quick scan of biodiversity status and identify conservation strategies. Training farmers to use site-specific nutrient management should be stimulated. Furthermore, acknowledging multiple land-use functions will help to develop biodiversity conservation strategies that are acceptable to farmers and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reclaiming farmland from lakes in China in the 1950s damaged the water quality of many lakes. Tremendous efforts have been made since the late 1990s to restore vegetation around the damaged lakes. This paper examines water quality of Fuxian and Qilu Lakes and land-use characteristics within the two catchments in the high-altitude area of Yunnan Province, China. Landsat TM data acquired in 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2005 were used to extract land use and land cover (LULC) information. Measurements of five water quality indices (WQIs), BOD, COD, pH, TN and TP, for the same period of time were examined. The results showed that the area of residential and forest/shrub increased, whereas that of cropland and barren land decreased from 1989 to 2005 in both catchments. Qilu Lake was much more polluted than Fuxian Lake, and pollution worsened over time for both lakes. The differences in water quality between the two lakes were caused by differences in LULC composition and continued degradation in water quality was caused by intensive farming and urban sprawl. Unless the landscape is converted back to its pre-1950 composition and structure, water quality in both lakes cannot be significantly improved and will continue to threaten sustainable development in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional land-use development projects are undertaken to protect water resources necessary for agriculture, energy and sustaining human life. The Değrmendere valley, in the province of Trabzon in the Black Sea region of Turkey, provides clean water to the city of Trabzon. The valley is part of the Silk Road from Asia to the Black Sea and contains historical monasteries such as Sumela, Kustul and Vazelon. However, over the years, misuse of the valley has caused freshwater, sea and environmental pollution. In an attempt to overcome these problems, a multilateral project, Değirmendere Vadisi Çevre Düzenlemesi (DEVA&CCedil;ED), was launched in the region. This paper aims to provide information necessary for engineering projects within the region. Six villages, on both sides of the valley, were selected for this research and evaluated in terms of river basin utilization, topography, cadastral survey of property and ownership, and land readjustment improvements. The study found illegal and improper urbanization, including industrial facilities within the valley causing water pollution. Current cadastral base maps are not sufficiently accurate for engineering projects, and in some places buildings have been constructed on unstable soils that are susceptible to landslides. The research results have helped to generate important recommendations for rehabilitation of the river basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify the land-use factors benefiting sustainable land management in terms of environmental conservation. For evaluating the impacts of land use on the environment, the following parameters were used: chemical fertiliser and pesticide use, land-use structure and diversity. The farmers' income, land tenure and farming scale were selected for their influence on agricultural sustainability. The analysis shows a rapid increase in use of chemical fertiliser and pesticide in the past 40 years, and an observable increase in land-use diversity. The amount of chemical fertiliser used per unit area in large-scale farming was lower than that at small scales, but large-scale farming consumes more pesticide than small-scale farming. A significant negative correlation was observed between the proportions of the holdings possessing land and the holdings using the chemical fertiliser. In order to achieve sustainable agriculture, it is necessary to manage crop systems and land use towards selecting new strains and varieties of crops and fruits with a lower demand for chemical fertiliser and a higher resistance to disease and pests, balancing large- and small-scale farming, and ensuring land tenure and economic incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we identify two distinct notions of accuracy of land-use models and highlight a tension between them. A model can have predictive accuracy: its predicted land-use pattern can be highly correlated with the actual land-use pattern. A model can also have process accuracy: the process by which locations or land-use patterns are determined can be consistent with real world processes. To balance these two potentially conflicting motivations, we introduce the concept of the invariant region, i.e., the area where land-use type is almost certain, and thus path independent; and the variant region, i.e., the area where land use depends on a particular series of events, and is thus path dependent. We demonstrate our methods using an agent-based land-use model and using multitemporal land-use data collected for Washtenaw County, Michigan, USA. The results indicate that, using the methods we describe, researchers can improve their ability to communicate how well their model performs, the situations or instances in which it does not perform well, and the cases in which it is relatively unlikely to predict well because of either path dependence or stochastic uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the way in which lived experiences of farmers in the Ord Valley have intersected with representations of the Ord Valley over time. I contrast the development of Stage 1 of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme in the 1960s with a proposal put forward in the late 1990s for greatly expanding the area of irrigated agriculture as Stage 2 of the scheme. I examine the rhetoric employed in planning documents and public media coverage of the first and proposed second stages of the Ord Irrigation Scheme and explore its connections with social identifications of farmers in the Ord Valley since the 1960s. I then argue the value of this approach for understanding the dynamic relationship between the spatial practices and social identifications of farmers and representations of place and land use in public media and planning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]