Urban sprawl and a policy of converting farmland to woodland and grassland in the fragile ecological environments of the Loess Plateau of China can cause complex land use changes that significantly affect ecosystem services and functions. This study investigated changes in ecosystem services in…
Based on the analysis of land consolidation engineering effects on biodiversity conservation in hilly areas, this study considers integrating biodiversity conservation into traditional land consolidation projects and integration biodiversity conservation measures into land consolidation…
This paper reports on the remarkable results we achieved with a novel, inexpensive collecting method, i.e. band-shelter trapping, during a survey conducted in 25 urban parks and greenbelts in the Beijing metropolitan area from April to October during 2007–2009. The trap was made of 3-cm wide,…
The assessment of groundwater vulnerability to pollution has become a useful tool for groundwater pollution prevention and control. Following the theory of overlay index method and with the aid of GIS technique and a statistical method, this study employed a modified DRASTIC model to assess the…
Overgrazing is a primary agent to cause and aggravate desertification in the Horqin Sandy Grassland of northern China that has reduced the capacity of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage in the region. Grazing exclosure practice is recommended to control the desertification by vegetation…
Pollen and charcoal analysis, with high resolution AMS ¹⁴C dating, on two sediment sections in the Hexi Corridor track the process of settlement development and abandonment during the Bronze Age. The evidence shows that agricultural activity during the Bronze Age caused an increase in farmland…
Outward expansion of urban lands in the developing nations is often associated with a substantial loss of environmental resources such as forests, wetlands, freshwater and cash crop fields. Yet, determining how different aspects of urbanisation – such as city population size and spread pattern…
Extensive land-use and land-cover change, triggered by rapid development of tourism and the expansion of townships, has occurred in the area surrounding the Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve (CMBR) in northeast China, a reservoir for distinctive ecosystems and biological diversity. The…
That the multi-source remote sensing information integrates knowledge-based geospatial constraints to develop efficient and practical Land cover classification algorithm has become one of the most important developing directions in the field of remote sensing ground object classification. Remote…
Because most land-cover types have distinct seasonal changes and corresponding reflectance characteristics in remotely sensed images, the signatures in time-series data are useful for discriminating different land covers. Although temporal signatures have been used to classify different land-…
Cities have been expanding rapidly worldwide, especially over the past few decades. Mapping the dynamic expansion of impervious surface in both space and time is essential for an improved understanding of the urbanization process, land-cover and land-use change, and their impacts on the…
Understanding how land use and land cover change influences the flow and water quality of rivers is critically important for river management and restoration. Human activities have transformed the landscapes in southern China where damaged river systems need to be restored and better managed for…