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Land-Use Change and Ecosystem Services

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil Conservation and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 May 2023) | Viewed by 3670

Special Issue Editors

1. International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing 100094, China
2. Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China
Interests: fluvia processes; river channel change; sediment transport; landscape evolution; hydromorphology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Computer, School of Computer and Science Engineering, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China
Interests: GeoAI; land change detection; ecosystem monitoring; spatial analysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Human beings are significantly changing the terrestrial land cover by transforming vast wild areas into human-dominated land-use types. Intense land-use change can increase soil and nutrient erosion and reduce crop yield, and conversions between different land-use types can degrade ecosystem function and erode biodiversity. Maintaining balance between land use and ecosystem services is critical to our sustainable socio-economic development. Although many scientists have worked on related topics, more efforts are still needed to get detailed knowledge of land-use change and its effects. The advancements of big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies will help enhance the reliability and replicability of our findings. This Special Issue aims to collect high-quality research targeting the use of big data and deep learning in land-use analyses.

Potential studies should focus on the following and other relevant themes:

  • Land-use change and its relevant impacts on ecosystem services;
  • Environmental degradation caused by land-use change;
  • Land-use induced biodiversity loss and ecosystem transformation;
  • Drivers of land-use change;
  • Sustainable interaction between land use and ecosystem function;
  • The use of big data and cloud computing in land-use analysis;
  • Deep-learning-based land use and ecosystem analytic models.

Dr. Yuanxu Ma
Dr. Shaohua Wang
Dr. Xun Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • land use
  • land cover
  • soil erosion
  • ecosystem services
  • ecosystem restoration
  • biodiversity conservation
  • climate change
  • anthropogenic disturbance
  • sustainable development

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 12808 KiB  
Article
Analysis of Spatial-Temporal Changes and Driving Forces of Desertification in the Mu Us Sandy Land from 1991 to 2021
by Xinyang Ji, Jinzhong Yang, Jianyu Liu, Xiaomin Du, Wenkai Zhang, Jiafeng Liu, Guangwei Li and Jingkai Guo
Sustainability 2023, 15(13), 10399; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151310399 - 1 Jul 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1334
Abstract
Desertification is one of the most critical environmental and socioeconomic issues in the world today. Located in the transitional region between the desert and the Loess Plateau, the Mu Us Sandy Land is one of the nine most environmentally sensitive areas in the [...] Read more.
Desertification is one of the most critical environmental and socioeconomic issues in the world today. Located in the transitional region between the desert and the Loess Plateau, the Mu Us Sandy Land is one of the nine most environmentally sensitive areas in the world. Remote sensing provides an effective technical method for desertification monitoring. In order to analyze the spatiotemporal distribution of desertification in the Mu Us Sandy Land from 1991 to 2021, the “MSAVI-Albedo” model was employed to extract desertification data in 1991, 2002, 2009 and 2021. The clustering characteristics of desertification were analyzed based on Moran’s I statistic. Subsequently, the driving forces in desertification changes were investigated using a geographical detector to analyze the influence of soil, meteorology, and topography on desertification. Additionally, the impact of meteorological and human factors on desertification change in the Mu Us Sandy Land was assessed. From 1991 to 2021, the degree of desertification of the Mu Us Sandy Land showed an overall decreasing trend, and the percentage of land classified as undergoing extremely severe, severe, moderate and mild desertification was improved by 86.11%, 81.82%, 52.5% and 37.42%, respectively. The proportion of land classified as undergoing extremely severe desertification decreased from 29.22% to 5.62%, and the proportion of land undergoing no desertification increased from 4.16% to 18.33%. At the same time, the desertification center shifted westward, and the desertification distribution showed a clustering trend. It is known that different factors affect the formation and distribution of desertification in the Mu Us Sandy Land in the following order: soil, meteorology, and topography. Over the past 30 years, the mean annual temperature and annual precipitation increased at rates of 0.01871 °C/a and 1.0374 mm/a, respectively, while the mean annual wind speed decreased at a rate of 0.00945 m/s·a. These changes provided more favorable natural conditions for vegetation growth and sand fixation. Human factors, such as economic development, agriculture and animal husbandry practices, and the policy of returning farmland to forest (grassland) also had a significant impact on the desertification process, leading to a year-by-year improvement in the ecological environment of the Mu Us Sandy Land. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land-Use Change and Ecosystem Services)
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22 pages, 3641 KiB  
Article
Ecosystem Service Value Estimation of Paddy Field Ecosystems Based on Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data
by Tiecheng Huang, Wenjiang Huang, Kun Wang, Yongkang Li, Zhenhai Li and Yong’an Yang
Sustainability 2022, 14(15), 9466; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159466 - 2 Aug 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1723
Abstract
A paddy field ecosystem (PFE) is an important component of an agricultural land ecosystem and is also a special artificial wetland with extremely high value. Taking Tianjin (a municipality city in China) as the research area and using multi-source remote sensing data, we [...] Read more.
A paddy field ecosystem (PFE) is an important component of an agricultural land ecosystem and is also a special artificial wetland with extremely high value. Taking Tianjin (a municipality city in China) as the research area and using multi-source remote sensing data, we improved the accounting framework of the ecosystem service value (ESV) of PFEs and the calibration of model parameters. The ESV of PFEs was mapped at medium-high resolution and fine-grain at the provincial scale. The results showed that: (1) the net ESV of PFEs in Tianjin in 2019 was RMB 29.68 × 108, accounting for 0.21% of GDP. The positive ESV was RMB 35.53 × 108, the negative ESV was RMB 5.84 × 108, and the average ESV per unit area was RMB 5.47 × 104/ha; (2) as a proportion of the ESV of PFE, the value of climate regulation (61.27%) was greater than the value of carbon fixation and oxygen release (15.29%), which was greater than the value of primary products supply (8.08%). The production value of PFEs is far lower than their ESV; (3) the total net ESV in Baodi District was RMB 16.85 × 108, accounting for 56.77% of Tianjin’s ESV, and the net ESV per unit area was RMB 5.72 × 104/ha, both of which were higher than in other districts; (4) the pixel-based hot spots analysis showed that the number of hot spots (high-value ESV) and cold spots (low-value ESV) reached 98.00% (hot spots 56.9%, cold spots 41.1%) with a significant cluster distribution. The hot spots were mostly distributed in Baodi District (37.8%) and the cold spots were mostly distributed in Ninghe District (17.2%). The research results can support agricultural development, improve countermeasures according to local conditions, and provide theoretical support for regional land use planning, ecological compensation policy formulation and ecological sustainable development. Our methodology can be used to assess the impact of land use change on ESV. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land-Use Change and Ecosystem Services)
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