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The thermal environment can have several effects on people who use outdoor spaces; especially on university campuses were the thermal environments of educational living spaces are important. This study focuses on the importance of greening as a potential method for passive cooling and for use in reducing ambient air temperatures, especially at a pedestrian level. There are two main strategies of greening modification. These two strategies have been proposed to improve campus environments and aim to include more greening area by adding trees to current green areas and by growing a grass layer on the rooftop of educational buildings. In this study, two approaches are presented, including an on-site measurement and a numerical simulation model that uses ENVI-met. These greening modification methods were investigated regarding their local cooling effect. This study was conducted at the institutional campus of Saga University, Japan. We hypothesized that the average maximum temperature would decrease and reach 2.27 °C in the peak of the summer (at 15:00) when the quantity of trees was increased by 20%. Furthermore, combining both modification methods led to the largest air temperature decrease with an average and maximum of 0.24 °C and 2.29 °C, respectively. The results of this study allow university decision makers and planners to identify more precise green campus policies, which are necessary for improving the educational environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The current efforts and technologies on energy efficiency seem unable to hold back the increasing momentum of the household energy consumption per unit of China, which has been on the increase since 2000. Usually, this phenomenon is simply attributed to the demand for more comfortable household lifestyle due to the current rapid economic development of China. However, the latent cause—rebound effect has long been ignored in the household energy efficiency of China, while it has been analyzed deeply and recognized widely all over the world. This article studies the rebound effect in the household energy efficiency of China and its related negative influence on the energy demand. A high rebound effect of at least 30% in the household energy efficiency of China is presumed by reference to the rebound effects of other countries. Finally, five feasible ways are summarized to mitigate the rebound effect and their values are analyzed respectively: (1) develop renewable energy resources, (2) increase energy prices, (3) improve energy efficiency, (4) build rational energy prices system, and (5) improve consumer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatially land use models are indispensable for sustainable land use planning. This study demonstrates a combined Markov–Cellular Automata model to analyze temporal change and spatial distribution of land use stressed by natural and socioeconomic factors in Saga, Japan. Firstly, area change and spatial distribution of land use are calculated using GIS technology, and then the transition among different land use types is analyzed to obtain the transformation matrices during a period of 1976–2006. Meanwhile, an integration evaluation procedure with natural and socioeconomic data is used to generate the transition potential maps. Secondly, using the transition potential maps and transition matrices, a Markov–Cellular Automata model is established to simulate spatial distribution of land use in 2006. Finally, we use this Markov–Cellular Automata model to forecast the future land use changes during the period of 2015–2042. As a consequence, area change simulation predicts a continuing downward trend in agriculture land and forestland areas, as well as an upward trend in built-up areas; spatial distribution simulation indicates that built-up land will expand toward suburban regions, and land use of urban center is at the decline stage. Hence, if the current trends keep constant without holistic sustainable development measures, severe land use decline will ensue. The study is anticipated to help local authorities better understand and address a complex land use system, and develop the improved land use management strategies that can better balance urban expansion and ecological conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: At present, environmental issues associated with rapid economic development are becoming critical concerns that arouse government''s and people''s particular attention. A large amount of influencing factors and especially their complicated interactions have always thrown confused insights into assessing the dynamic evolvement and sustainable development of urban economy–resource–environment (ERE) system and programming the developing strategies. A combination of system dynamics (SD) and geographic information system (GIS) is expected to explicitly understand the synergic interaction and feedback among a variety of influencing factors in time and space, since SD model can extend the spatial analysis functions of GIS to realize both dynamic simulation and trend prediction of an ERE system development. According to connotation and framework of sustainable development, this study proposes a dynamic combination method of SD–GIS to model and evaluate the urban development in Chongqing city of China suffering from depletion of resource and degradation of environment. To compare different policy inclinations with regard to potential ERE effects, typical scenarios (current, resource, technology and environment scenarios) are designed by adjusting the parameters in the model and changing the specification of some variables. Integrated assessment results indicate that the current ERE system of Chongqing is not sustainable; environment scenario is more effective to sustainable development of urban ERE system in a long run. Under the considerations of development features and regional differences, as well as regular discipline on urbanization, a coordinated combination of environmental, resource and technology scenarios is anticipated to realize sustainable development of urban ERE system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]