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National park roads and parkways is an important part of national parks in the United States. The road is integrated with national parks, which is the characteristics and brand image of national parks. National park roads and parkways is not only an important means of transportation in national parks, but also a tourist attraction and destination. For tourists, driving on the national park roads and parkways means visiting the national parks. The development of national park roads and parkways embodies the integration of road engineering and aesthetics, philosophy, recreation, ecology and other disciplines, promotes the transformation of road from a single traffic function to a complex function of recreation, landscape, culture and protection, highlights the gorgeous landscape and imaginative engineering alignment, and also shows how to provide diversified recreational opportunities in protecting priceless natural and cultural resources to achieve a balance between environmental protection and public tourists. This paper makes a thorough analysis of the development process of American national park roads and parkways in the past hundred years from the aspects of concepts, development background, construction idea, development measures, management system, financial support and construction practice, and summarizes the development experience and enlightenment. The conclusion is to grasp the law of national park roads and parkways development in essence. From this point of view, the paper puts forward some suggestions for the development of China's national park roads and parkways. These studies are of great theoretical value and practical significance to the flourishing development of China's national parks, national park roads and parkways, tourist scenic byways and tourist highways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an inevitable requirement to modify human development index (HDI) with greenness and fairness indicators. Using ecological footprint, this paper tried to construct the human-ecological sustainable development index (HEDI) based on panel data of 28 countries from 1990 to 2014, and analyzed the contribution of sub- indicators to HEDI with the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition approach. Fairness was adjusted to construct a comprehensive human- ecological sustainable development index (cHEDI) that could fully reflect the degree of economy, society, ecology and equal development comprehensively. We analyzed the spatial and temporal changes of HEDI and cHEDI with the index in 28 countries around the world. The results show that developed countries with high biomass surplus are highly sustainable, ranking higher than other countries. One of the main factors affecting sustainable development is high carbon emissions in these countries. Besides the high carbon emissions, the shortage of biomass resources is another unsustainable reason in the developed countries with biomass deficit, which maintain development by transferring assets from other countries. Unfairness leads to a decline in comprehensive sustainability in the United States. From 1990 to 2014, income and education in developing countries increased rapidly, but ecological consumption and Gini coefficient continued to rise, and the inhibitory effect gradually expanded to increase the unsustainability of development. The sustainability index of the United States and developing countries is greatly affected by the Gini coefficient. The United Arab Emirates ranked last in the world, with the least sustainable development mode. Although its income ranked first in the world, biomass and energy consumption was very high, and the Gini coefficient far exceeded that of other countries. The development of the least developed countries mainly came from contribution of health, education and low ecological consumption. Barren natural assets limited their further development. Different countries have different shortcomings in human sustainable development. The sub- divisions were highly correlated, hence to achieve the high level of human sustainable development requires better balance between society, economy, greenness, and fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis on the intensity of land development and utilization is of great significance to improving the efficency of land development and utilization and promoting ecological and environmental protection work. Taking the Tampa Bay watershed of Florida, USA as the study area, based on the information of four TM/OLI remote sensing images of 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015, this paper constructs a series of models of land- use dynamics, conversion matrix, land development and utilization intensity and land-use structure with GIS technology. Then, it conducts research on spatial and temporal pattern of land development and utilization intensity in Tampa Bay watershed. The results showed that: (1) Construction land and woodland are the dominant types of land use in the watershed. The area of construction land mainly converted from cultivated land increased most, with the ratio being 53.74%. (2) The relative change rates of all types of land use have obvious spatial differences and those of rivers and lakes have the greatest. The change speed of unused land is the largest, with the highest single dynamic degree of up to 1.11%. The average annual growth rate of construction land is steady at about 0.30%. The size with the highest dynamic degree was decreasing from the northern and southern polar nuclei outward, and the areas with higher dynamic degrees were gradually converted into the lower dynamic areas. (3) Information entropy slightly decreased, the land use structure heterogeneity constantly decreased. Area of the land-use composition is listed in the order of Construction Land>Wood>Cultivated Land and Pasture>Rivers and Lakes> Tidal Flat and Marsh> Unused Land. (4) The intensity of land development and utilization is the highest in the Coastal Pinellas county and Tampa city. The area of development is much larger compared with the adjustment period, and the intensity of land development and utilization was obviously strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]