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The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) metropolitan region is one of the most rapidly urbanized regions in China and has experienced a remarkable period of population growth (at an annual growth rate of 3.0%), and urbanization (at an annual growth rate of 9.2%). Rapid urbanization has dramatically changed land use/land cover patterns and ecosystems in the region, causing widespread environmental problems such as habitat fragmentation, aggravation of environmental pollution, decline in biodiversity and ecosystem degredation. These problems have restricted the sustainable development of socio-economic system of the Yangtze River Delta Region. Facing the challenges, the Yangtze River Delta Region is carrying out the practice of regional integration planning and cooperation in environmental governance, which urgently needs the guidance of relevant theories and methods. Some of the key environmental policy pilots have been carried on in this region, such as the Ecological Red Line Policy (Bai et al, 2016; Lü et al, 2013). This policy has one of the main objectives of protecting important eco-function areas i.e. ecosystem service hot spots, to deliver services such as water storage, clean drinking water, and carbon sequestration, and to maintain ecological safety to support economic and social development, which an important policy orientation of ecosystem services approach. Ecosystem services are the contributions of ecosystem structure and function to human well-being, connecting natural and socio-economic systems. The ecosystem services approach is considered to be one of the important decision support tools for guiding and formulating environmental policies. Based on the theories and methods of ecosystem services, combined with local expert knowledge, remote sensing and GIS technologies, this dissertation aims is mainly to develop a comprehensive framework of ecosystem services assessment and decision support for rapid urbanization regions. Based on this framework, the spatial characteristics, supply-demand relationship and flow direction of ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Delta Region are analysed and evaluated. Main results of this thesis are as follows: (1) According to the characteristics of the regional ecosystems of the Yangtze River Delta Region, combined with local expert knowledge, the Burkhard's scoring and assessment method of ecosystem services was improved, and the score matrix between twelve ecosystem types and twenty-three ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Delta Region was established. (2) Based on DPSIR model, the characteristics of the social-ecological complex ecosystem and change of ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Delta Region were analysed. The main ecological and environmental problems were identified. Causes and main driving forces of decline in ecosystem services were revealed in the region. (3) Based on ARCGIS platform, the status quo of ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Delta region was analysed and evaluated. The spatial differentiation characteristics and main impact factors of ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Delta region were clarified. The hot spots of total ecosystem services were aggregated in the southwest areas, while the cold spots were distributed in the middle and northeast areas of the region. The hot spots of supporting services and regulating services aggregately distributed in the southwest mountainous areas while hot spots of provisioning services mainly in the northeast plain, and high value of cultural services widespread in the waterbodies and southwest mountainous areas. The spatial heterogeneity is determined by biophysical features and land use types. Based on the assessment, six major ecosystem services functional zones were divided: (I) South Ecological Integrity Conservation Zone, (II) Southwest Mountainous and Hilly Forest Ecological Zone, (III) Northeast Plain Agriculture Ecological Zone, (IV) Middle Aquatic Ecological Conservation Zone, (V) Eastern Coastal Estuaries Ecological Zone, and (VI) Urban Development Area., and the corresponding management strategies on the basis of environmental problems and ecosystem services characteristics in each of the functional zones were put forward. (4) Using regional spatial data in net primary productivity, the quality levels of forest and cropland were graded and the previous scores of ecosystem services in forest and cropland were calibrated. Then, the hot spots and clustering patches of forest and farmland ecosystem services were identified by ARCGIS tools. Finally, the forest ecosystem conservation areas (red line) and cropland ecosystem conservation areas (red line) in the Yangtze River Delta region were delineated. (5) Based on the improved Burkhard's supply-demand budget of ecosystem services method, the budgets of three regulating services (erosion regulating service, flood regulating service and water purification regulating service) of the sixteen core cities in the region were established, and the characteristics of surplus and deficit of three services of the cities in the region were analysed. Combing the budget with analysis of flow direction of ecosystem services, the potential provisioning cities and the benefiting cities of ecosystem services are identified. On the basis of the results, the potential model of regional inter-city environmental cooperation is proposed. This dissertation not only improves the methods of ecosystem service assessment and decision support in rapidly urbanized regions, but also makes contributions to the guidance in delineation of ecological red line, regional environmental cooperation and sustainable development in the Yangtze River Delta Region.

This thesis presents a quantitative case study on incidence, survival and presentation of patients diagnosed with gastroesophageal cancer to evaluate whether where people live affects how they present and survive with a gastroesophageal cancer diagnosis. The focus research evolved from studies on gastroesophageal cancer’s ‘geographic affiliation’ and a desire to review whether patient and population attributes could be harnessed to reveal potential ‘hotspots’ to inform targeted health intervention strategies. As the most crucial stage for intervention was associated with patients detecting symptoms early enough for intervention, the focus of this case study was narrowed to survival and presentation. This research analysed data from 2785 patients who presented to a regional referral specialist cancer treatment centre between the years 2000 and 2013. Cohort analysis revealed common attributes and survival, and data were merged with demographic information in a geographic information system to present findings in mapped format. Descriptive analysis revealed an association between later stage presentation and reduced survival outcome. Emergency presentations tended to have worse outcomes. Survival deteriorated with advancing age. Gastroesophageal cancer diagnoses in the under 54 age group was more common in lower socioeconomic groups and survival outcomes were marginally lower than in those patients from the least deprived areas. Spatial analysis revealed variation in incidence, presentation and survival across the region. Though this case study revealed several new findings on gastroesophageal cancer presentation and survival, there remains no single solution to informing and encouraging earlier diagnosis interventions. Though presenting data at finer scales of resolution is more clinically relevant, it threatens patient confidentiality.

The successful development of the tidal stream power industry fundamentally relies on a thorough, quantitative understanding of the available resource. Numerical simulations and laboratory flume experiments have demonstrated that increased turbulence and wave-induced motion can have detrimental effects on the fatigue and performance of prototype tidal stream turbines (TSTs). Knowledge of the relationships between mean current velocity, turbulence and surface waves is limited and presents a significant research gap. This research makes a significant contribution to the field by developing empirical models from in situ data collected within the Humber Estuary. These models estimate the turbulence strength and intensity at a point and through depth given a mean current velocity. An 18-day deployment of bed-mounted directional wave recorders (DWR) at Foul Holme Spit simultaneously recorded two-dimensional flow velocities and surface wave parameters. Static, vessel-mounted, acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) surveys recorded turbulence through depth near St. Andrews Dock. The analyses revealed distinct relationships between the mean current velocity, turbulence strength and turbulence intensity at a point which are comparable to recently published results. The inter-tidal relationship between streamwise mean current velocity and turbulence strength is modelled at a point using power regression where α is 0.13 and β is 0.72 with an R2 value of 0.8721. The inter-tidal relationship between streamwise mean current velocity and turbulence intensity is modelled at a point using power regression where γ is 14.315 and δ is -0.2316 with an R2 value of 0.5482. A newly defined empirical relationship between depth-averaged mean current velocity and turbulence intensity is modelled using power regression where ε is 17.75 and ζ is -0.94 with an R2 value of 0.7912. The models derived at a point are tested on the data collected through depth and exhibited strong predictive capability within the order of 0.1 ms-1. The exponential approximation of wave-induced velocity, proposed by Soulsby (2006), was tested and shown to be inappropriate for estimating wave-induced velocities at this scale. A comparative spectral analysis between DWR sample bursts determined that spikes in the turbulence spectra can be attributed to surface wave parameters, thus validating the conceptual model proposed by Soulsby and Humphrey (1990).

The thermal infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum has considerable potential for mineral and lithological mapping of the most abundant rock-forming silicates that do not display diagnostic features at visible and shortwave infrared wavelengths. Lithological mapping using visible and shortwave infrared hyperspectral data is well developed and established processing chains are available; however, there is a paucity of such methodologies for hyperspectral thermal infrared data. Here, a new fully automated processing chain for deriving lithological maps from hyperspectral thermal infrared data is presented; the processing chain is developed through testing of existing algorithms on synthetic hyperspectral data. The processing chain is then applied to the first ever airborne hyperspectral thermal data collected in the Antarctic. A combined airborne hyperspectral survey, targeted geological field mapping campaign and detailed mineralogical and geochemical datasets are applied to a small test site in West Antarctica where the geological relationships are typical of continental margin arcs. The challenging environmental conditions and cold temperatures in the Antarctic meant that the data have a significantly lower signal to noise ratio than is usually attained from airborne hyperspectral sensors. Preprocessing techniques were applied to improve the signal to noise ratio and convert the radiance images to ground leaving emissivity. Following preprocessing, the fully automated processing chain was applied to the hyperspectral imagery to generate a lithological map. The results show that the image processing chain was successful, despite the low signal to noise ratio of the imagery; the results are encouraging with the thermal imagery allowing clear distinction between granitoid types.