Land-Use Planning’s Role in Urban Forest Strategies: Recent Local Government Approaches in Australia

Many urban development processes, supported by land-use planning, negatively impact urban trees. Urban forest strategies are one approach local governments take to protect and increase urban trees. We evaluate connections between urban forest strategies and land-use planning to achieve tree cover on private property, through a review of 18 Australian local government strategies. We highlight the importance of state-level policies for local land-use planning, and conclude that if state-level land-use planning is to aid the protection and enhancement of urban trees, more active engagement with and explicit links to urban forest strategies at both local and state levels is needed.     

Field investigations of the 2013–14 drought through quali-quantitative freshwater monitoring at the headwaters of the Cantareira System,Brazil

Integrating seasonal patterns of water availability and land-use/land-cover change is crucial in watershed planning. Often, these are not considered under hydrological extremes affecting decision making. This article presents results from a multi-site, nested catchment experiment carried out during a dry period in the Cantareira Water Supply System, South-East Brazil, linking quali-quantitative freshwater monitoring to land-use/land-cover change. Results from 17 catchments show regional behaviour for nitrate loads and drainage areas (0.66–925 km²). An inverse correlation between forest cover and water yield was observed. Despite forest growth in spatial extent, nutrient loads showed potential hazards for water security.     

淮河流域蒸散发能力估算研究

蒸散发能力是水文模型的重要输入项,合理估算流域蒸散发能力直接影响流域产流量的计算精度。选取淮河息县以上流域为研究区,构建考虑土壤蒸发和植物散发的分布式双源蒸散发能力计算模型,并将能逐日动态模拟叶面积指数的植物生长模型与其集成,以日为时间尺度,基于流域土地利用、气象和植物生长资料,计算了2000-2008年研究区每个1 km×1 km栅格的蒸散发能力,并将蒸发皿所在网格的蒸散发能力计算值与蒸发皿观测得到的水面蒸发值进行了相关性分析。结果表明:模型计算的蒸散发能力能较好地反映流域实际蒸散发能力,可以为分布式水文模型提供蒸散发能力输入资料。研究成果为淮河流域蒸散发能力的计算提供了新的途径,对其它流域蒸散发能力的计算也具有参考价值。     

基于eCognition的土地利用遥感影像自动提取研究

遥感监测是开展区域水土流失动态监测的重要手段。对同一地区不同时期遥感影像进行影像分类,对比分析两期分类结果可以实现对土地利用等水土流失影响因子的动态监测。传统方法通常采用人工目视勾绘法获得土地利用分类结果,耗时耗力且效率不高。以同一地区不同时期的遥感影像为对象,基于eCognition软件平台,采用多尺度分割和面向对象分类方法快速获取了影像分类结果。结果表明,该方法分类精度较高,能有效提高工作效率。     

Macroinvertebrate assemblages along a land-use gradient in the upper River Njoro watershed of Lake Nakuru drainage basin, Kenya

A study was conducted in the upper reaches of the River Njoro watershed to test the impacts of changing land‐use patterns, from predominantly forest to pasture and agriculture, on benthic macroinvertebrate communities. Stream sampling sites were chosen to correspond to the main offstream land uses, including forests, grazing, small‐scale agriculture, and intensive agriculture. Physicochemical variables were measured at each sampling site, and from collected water samples. Sampled macroinvertebrates were identified, and taxon diversity, richness, evenness and dominance were estimated for each site. Higher mean temperatures were recorded at the grazed and cultivated sites, compared to the forested sites. Higher ammonia concentrations were characteristic of the grazed parts of the watershed, while higher mean total phosphorus and total nitrogen concentrations were observed at the intensively cultivated sites. Baetis and Simulidae composed 65% by number of all the invertebrates collected. They dominated the benthos of the cultivated sections of the watershed, where they formed up to 75% of the observed invertebrate numbers. However, higher mean diversities, richness and evenness were recorded at forested sites, with a few taxa (notably Lepidostoma hirtum, Potamon sp., Leptophlebia sp. and Helodidae) being restricted to these unpolluted reaches, although many other taxa were common to all sites. Our findings suggest that a change from forestry to agriculture and grazing land uses have affected the physicochemical environment of the River Njoro, leading to a reduction in the diversity and evenness of benthic macroinvertebrates.     

Issues in environmental impact assessment in victoria: What has scoresby taught us?

The recent environmental assessment of major freeway and public transport proposals for the Scoresby Transport Corridor in Melbourne has highlighted deficiencies in processes and methodologies. The paper discusses strategic environmental assessment procedures and argues that its early application has the potential to overcome some of the difficulties identified and detailed here.     

The influence of urban land-use on non-motorised transport casualties

The relationship between non-motorised road traffic casualties and land-use was investigated in two zones of approximately 8 km² in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Road traffic accidents are, more usually, analysed in relation to traffic flow, on the assumption that the latter can be derived from land-use data. Here, a direct relationship between primary functional land-use and non-motorised casualties is estimated.

We review past work in this area. A shortcoming of casualty data is that it does not record the origin and destination of the journeys being undertaken when the accident occurred. A method was established to identify zones within which most accidents could reasonably be expected to be related to the land-uses within that zone.

Generalised linear models were developed using non-motorised casualties as the response variable, with primary functional land-use, population density and junction density as explanatory variables. Separate models were constructed for each combination of cyclists and pedestrians, adults and children, working and non-working hours in city centre and suburban analysis zones.

In general, the study found that pedestrian casualties in the city centre zone are particularly associated with an increase in retail and community land-use during working hours. In the city centre zone, out of working hours, an increase in retail land-use (almost certainly clubs and bars) is also associated with an increase in pedestrian casualties. An increase in cyclist casualties during working hours (in the non-pedestrianised area) is associated with an increase in retail land-use.     

土地利用结构信息熵的时空变化规律

以阜新市为例,采用双因素方差分析的方法运用SAS统计软件对该市土地利用结构信息熵的时空变化规律进行研究.发现1996—2003年间阜新市土地利用结构信息熵时间上变化不大,而空间上具有较大的差异:海州区与其他几个区县的信息熵差异显著,信息熵变化最大;清河门区与阜蒙县的土地利用结构信息熵几乎没有变化.     

基于CA模型的城市土地利用与交通的初探

就土地利用与交通的交互关系进行了论述，在复杂的城市动态演化中，探讨了细胞自动机模拟的可行性，并对系统模型做了简单描述，以利类似的系统借鉴。     

A neural network approach using multi-scale textural metrics from very high-resolution panchromatic imagery for urban land-use classification

The successful launch of panchromatic WorldView-1 and the planned launch of WorldView-2 will make a major contribution towards the advancement of the commercial remote sensing industry by providing improved capabilities, more frequent revisits and greater imaging flexibility with respect to the precursor QuickBird satellite. Remote sensing data from panchromatic systems have a potential for more detailed and accurate mapping of the urban environment with details of sub-meter ground resolution, but at the same time, they present additional complexities for information mining.In this study, very high-resolution panchromatic images from QuickBird and WorldView-1 have been used to accurately classify the land-use of four different urban environments: Las Vegas (U.S.A.), Rome (Italy), Washington D.C. (U.S.A.) and San Francisco (U.S.A.). The proposed method is based on the analysis of first- and second-order multi-scale textural features extracted from panchromatic data. For this purpose, textural parameters have been systematically investigated by computing the features over five different window sizes, three different directions and two different cell shifts for a total of 191 input features. Neural Network Pruning and saliency measurements made it possible to determine the most important textural features for sub-metric spatial resolution imagery of urban scenes.The results show that with a multi-scale approach it is possible to discriminate different asphalt surfaces, such as roads, highways and parking lots due to the different textural information content. This approach also makes it possible to differentiate building architectures, sizes and heights, such as residential houses, apartment blocks and towers with classification accuracies above 0.90 in terms of Kappa coefficient computed over more than a million independent validation pixels.