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Due to anthropogenic activities, the earth's surface is consistently being altered. These alterations take the form of Land-use/cover change (LULCC), which is a fundamental driver of global, regional and local environmental change. LULCC studies have become pivotal in supplementing our understanding and observations of environmental change. However, understanding the past and present spatial-temporal variability of LULCC characteristics and their link to future land-use/cover trajectories at a catchment scale is limited, particularly in Southern Africa. To address this limitation, this study simulated future land-use change utilising a spatially distributed, empirical land-use modelling approach for the uThukela and uMngeni catchments in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The CA-Markov model, a popular and frequently utilised model employed in land-use and land-cover (LULC) predictive modelling, was selected to simulate LULCC conjointly with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques. The obtained kappa values (Kstandard, Klocation and Kno) achieved during the validation were all above 80%, thus indicating the model's reliability and capability to successfully predict future LULC in the study sites. Future projections indicated that both study areas are anticipated to experience anthropogenic induced LULCC, which further fragments the landscape configuration, functionality and ecological stability. Historical analysis of LULCC between 1990 and 2018, in the study catchments revealed considerable declines in the areas under grassland and indigenous forest, while the areas under cultivated land, commercial forestry and urban LULC classes increased. Future LULC projections showed that urban and agriculture land-uses increased significantly, with natural land-use classes such as grassland, other vegetation and indigenous forest declining in spatial extent across both. With an understanding of the extent of projected LULCC by 2030 within both catchments, proactive planning and management within the framework of sustainable land-use planning and water resource management in the respective catchments can be undertaken. Moreover, the results of the land-use modelling study can be used to infill historical data gaps, support effective land-use planning and provide a means to evaluate the impacts of different future development pathways.

Urban growth strategies are incorporated for land-use planning and transportation to facilitate people's movement towards a mass transit system. This requires transport demand analysis of a particular area so that, if possible, urban re-planning can be done to support long-term sustainable use of the transportation system. The paper focuses on the study of transportation demand analysis in some stations of the recently opened metro system in Qatar. The study uses hypothetical scenarios of land use density to analyze transportation demand. A regression model is used to assess the relationship between the generated transport demand from each type of land use, which shows that the land-use type can substantially impact the ridership of a mass transit system. Based on the analysis conducted in this paper, it can be concluded that if ridership in a particular area is to be increased, its development for mixed land use might be a good option. The proposed mixed-use planning and the insights developed in the paper are expected to help urban planners in different countries with similar urban growth and development situations.

Establishing agro-processing industries in areas with suitable ecological potentials can help to avoid waste of resources. Lack of process industries, along with the transportation difficulties and market regulations, has led to farmers abandoning their crops due to the absence of an adequate market, and consumers are faced with losses due to the declining supply of products and price increases. This paper aims to determine the procedure to locate suitable process industries based on ecological resources and agricultural development criteria. Agricultural development needs a paradigm shift to an ecological intensification approach to understand the behavior of agro-processing industries on the environment. Ecological suitability assessment of the agro-processing development is considered as the foundation for prioritization, applying some critical ecological criteria. For the socioeconomic, a combination of DEMATEL-ANP techniques is applied. Priority assessment of agro-industries development carried out using VIKOR. By overlaying the appropriate layers of socioeconomic on ecologically suitable areas, suitable locations for agro-process industries are obtained. The results have emphasized that sustainable land-use planning for agro-processing industries should be based on ecological requirements, and suitable areas located in some zones with suitable infrastructures as well as ecological qualification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use changes associated with the advance of forest plantations on lands previously used for agriculture generate diverse perceptions of the socio-environmental impact they entail. Despite, these perceptions are influenced by the landscape context produced by the land use changes. In last decades there has been a transformation in land use associated with the development of forestry activity in the northwest of the province of Misiones, Argentina. Considering local communities in order to improve assessment, governance and decisionmaking in sustainable management, we posed two questions: What are environmental, social and economic perceptions of tree plantations of local communities with different land-use context'? What is the role of scale of production in these perceptions? To this purpose we first described the productive matrix of the landscape mapping the forest plantation cover of the area and classifying the productive units in different Forest Management Model (large, medium and small scale).Then, we identified and selected participants from comparable rural communities in each FMM, who through a Q survey grouped phrases according their perceptions. Subsequently, emerging viewpoints were recognised. Our analysis shows that forestry activity is not poorly conceived in contrast to conceptualization of the management of larger-scale productive systems in combination with government policies promoting them. The management carried out through large areas that result in a homogenization of the landscape are perceived negatively. In general terms, the local imagination perceives that the promotion and establishment of forestry companies could be positive if it is supported on planning to protect pre-existing familiar productive systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The town of Pabna covers the northern floodplain of the river Padma, characterized by abundance of low-lying depressions and remarkably variable subsurface lithology, which in turn influences the geotechnical condition. The northern and eastern parts are characterized by low SPT strength, which is not suitable for heavy construction. Based on the study of geological and geomorphological maps, engineering properties of soil, such as lithology, atterberg limit, consistency, bearing capacity, plasticity, compaction, consolidation and compressibility, SPT etc., a geotechnical map is prepared. The study area is divided into four major unit areas. Unit I is not suitable at all whereas, unit II is less suitable for heavy construction. But normal foundation up to the depth of 10 to 18 m below the surface is needed for the construction of high-rise buildings. Sediments of unit II are weakly compacted and have medium plasticity and compressibility. Plasticity of sandy silt and silty clay is low to medium with high activity. Unit III is the most suitable for heavy construction with normal foundation depth up to 3 to 10 m below the surface. It constitutes mainly sand with low plasticity and low to very low compressibility. The SPT values vary from 10 to 40. The geotechnical assessment of the subsurface sediments of the area is essential before constructing civil engineering structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use/land cover (LULC) changes have an impact on land surface temperature (LST) at the local, regional, and global scales. To simulate the LULC and LST changes of the environmentally important area of northern Pakistan, this research focused on spatio-temporal LULC and associated LST changes since 1987 and made predictions to 2047. We classified LULC from Landsat TM and ETM data, using the maximum probability supervised categorization approach. LST was retrieved using the Radiative Transfer Equation (RTE) methodology. Furthermore, we simulated LULC using the integrated approaches of Cellular Automata (CA) and Weighted Evidence (WE) and used a regression model to predict LST. The built-up areas and vegetation have increased by 2.1% and 11% due to a decline in the barren land by −8.5% during the last 30 years. The LULC is expected to increase, particularly the built-up and vegetation classes by 2.74% and 13.66%, respectively, and the barren land would decline by −4.2% by 2047. Consequently, the higher LST classes (i.e., 27 °C to <30 °C and ≥30 °C) soared up by about 25.18% and 34.26%, respectively, during the study period, which would further expand to 30.19% and 14.97% by 2047. The lower LST class (i.e., 12 °C to <21 °C) indicated a downtrend of about −41.29% and would further decrease to −3.13% in the next 30 years. The study findings are useful for planning and management, especially for climatologists, land-use planners, and researchers in sustainable land use with rapid urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]