Long-term trends in vegetation phenology indicate ecosystem change due to the combined impacts of human activities and climate. In this study we used 1982 to 2006 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (AVHRR NDVI) imagery across China and the TIMESAT program to quantify annual vegetation production and its changing trend. Results showed great spatial variability in vegetation growth and its temporal trend across the country during the 25-year study period. Significant decreases in vegetation production were detected in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and in industrializing regions in southern China, including the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and areas along the Yangtze River. Significant increases in vegetation production were found in Xinjiang, Central China, and North-east China. Validation of the NDVI trends and vegetated area changes were conducted using Landsat imagery and the results were consistent with the analysis from AVHRR data. We also found that although the causes of the vegetation change vary locally, the spatial pattern of the vegetation change and the areas of greatest impact from national policies launched in the 1970s, such as the opening of economic zones and the ‘Three-North Shelter Forest Programme’, are similar, which indicates an impact of national policies on ecosystem change and that such impacts can be detected using the method described in this paper.

Based on the interpretation and vector processing of remote sensing images in 1985 and 2000, the spatial changes of wetland landscape patterns in Dadu River catchment in the last two decades were studied using spatial analysis method. Supported by Apack software, the indices of wetland landscape pattern were calculated, and the information entropy (IE) was also introduced to show the changes of wetland landscape information. Results showed that wetland landscape in this region was characteristic of patch-corridor-matrix configuration and dominantly consisted of natural wetlands. Landscape patterns changed a little with low fragment and showed concentrated distribution with partial scattered distribution during the period from 1985 to 2000. The values of patch density and convergence index kept stable, and the values of diversity, evenness indices and IE showed a slight decrease, while dominance and fractal dimension indices were increased. All types of wetland landscapes had higher adjacency probabilities with grassland landscape in 1985 and 2000, and there was extremely weak hydrological link and large spatial gap among river, glacier, reservoir and pond wetlands due to low adjacency matrix values. Since their cumulative contribution exceeded 81% through the PCA analysis, the agriculture activities would be the main driving force to the landscape changes during the past 15 years.

It is very important to understand the temporal and spatial changes of residential land for the improvement of human settlement environment. Based on the three TM images of 1986, 1996 and 2005 and other assistant maps, the temporal and spatial characteristics of residential land in the Yuyang desert region of northern Shaanxi Province of China were analyzed by using geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) technology. Some important conclusions were obtained, which mainly contained four aspects as follows. 1) The area of residential land in the Yuyang desert region increased 956.07 hm² in total, and the changes of residential land among the townships were different with four various change trends. The expansion speeds in the Yuyang Township and Qinhe Township were the biggest from 1986 to 1996 and from 1996 to 2005, respectively. The expansion intensities in other townships were below 0.1%, except the Yuyang Township. 2) The number of residential land patches increased 2847, while the average area and perimeter of residential land patches decreased 0.304 hm² and 60.78 m during 1986–2005, respectively. The residential land patches also displayed four different changes from 1986 to 2005 among the townships. 3) The residential land mainly distributed in the middle of Yuyang Township and Mahe Township, and the interface of Jinjitan Township and Mengjiawan Township. The total spatial pattern of residential land was relative stability, but the significant changes of residential land were found in the Yuyang Township and its vicinities during 1986–2005. 4) Three distribution patterns of residential land at the micro scale were categorized from the 100 typical villages in the study area. The number of villages in the pattern 1 increased, while the pattern 2 and pattern 3 decreased in recent 20 years, which implicated the adaptation of humans to the habitation environment. This research would provide scientific references for harmonizing the human-land relationship, optimizing the residential land spatial distribution patterns and constructing the well human settlement environment in the desert regions.

Storm surge is one of the most serious oceanic disasters. Accurate and timely numerical prediction is one of the primary measures for disaster control. Traditional storm surge models lack of accuracy and time effects. To overcome the disadvantages, in this paper, an analytical cyclone model was first added into the Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) consisting of high resolution, flooding and drying capabilities for 3D storm surge modeling. Then, we integrated MarineTools Pro into a geographic information system (GIS) to supplement the storm surge model. This provided end users with a friendly modeling platform and easy access to geographically referenced data that was required for the model input and output. A temporal GIS tracking analysis module was developed to create a visual path from storm surge numerical results. It was able to track the movement of a storm in space and time. MarineTools Pro’ capabilities could assist the comprehensive understanding of complex storm events in data visualization, spatial query, and analysis of simulative results in an objective and accurate manner. The tools developed in this study further supported the idea that the coupled system could enhance productivity by providing an efficient operating environment for accurate inversion or storm surge prediction. Finally, this coupled system was used to reconstruct the storm surge generated by Typhoon Agnes (No. 8114) and simulated typhoon induced-wind field and water elevations of Yangtze Estuary and Hangzhou Bay. The simulated results show good correlation with actual surveyed data. The simple operating interface of the coupled system is very convenient for users, who want to learn the usage of the storm surge model, especially for first-time users, which can save their modeling time greatly.

This article provides a brief description of the fire space monitoring system in Kazakhstan, including the GIS-technology incorporated in its structure. The system performs operative space monitoring of fire areas and burnt areas, mapping of large fire areas, analysis of seasonal and long-term dynamics of burnt areas, and estimation of fire risk zones. Examples of output information obtained from space monitoring of fires are given. Possible directions of development of fire space monitoring in Kazakhstan are specified.

Lancang-Mekong River Basin is one of eco-regions with rich biodiversity and high ecological values in the world. The basin has been strongly affected by human activities, particularly by dam construction. This study was conducted to investigate the vegetation distribution patterns in the dam areas along middle-low reach of the Lancang-Mekong River in Yunnan Province of China, where eight cascade dams have been planned or are being constructed. To identify the vegetation composition and structure, we sampled 126 quadrats along the transects arrayed vertically to both side of river channel from the year of 2004 to 2010. We found that the forest, shrub and grass communities were widely spread along the riverside. In low reach watershed of the Lancang-Mekong River, the dominated vegetations were grasses and shrubs which were severely disturbed by human activity. In middle reach of the Lancang-Mekong River, the dry-hot valley vegetation was found in the low valley. At high altitude, the pine forest and semi-evergreen seasonal forest were found. As a result of dam construction and operation, the structure and compositions of riparian vegetation were strongly changed. Some plants declined or disappeared due to the alteration of their habitats. The protection or restoration interventions are urgently needed to mitigate the risk of vegetation damage associated with dam projects along middle and low reach of the Lancang-Mekong River.

In Pearl River Delta (PRD), river water quality has deteriorated gradually due to population increase and ongoing industrialization and urbanization. In this study, multivariate statistic methods were used to assess water quality spatial pattern and to identify characteristics of water quality variation in the PRD. Water quality monitoring of the PRD during the year 2005 and 2008 was conducted at 25 different stations. Seventeen water quality parameters were analyzed for further studying. Results of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that all the parameters except air temperature, water temperature and zinc showed significant difference among monitoring stations in both dry and wet season. Monitoring stations in the PRD were separately classified into three statistically significant clusters at (D_link/D_max)<2 in dry and wet season, respectively. The three clusters indicated the similarity and dissimilarity of river water quality among 25 monitoring stations, corresponding to heavy pollution, moderate pollution and slight pollution. Thus, the results of this study are useful to evaluate water quality and manage water resources in the PRD.

The third terrace of the Yellow River was well developed in Xunhua basin in the north-east margin of the Tibetan Plateau. The terrace was formed at ca 75 ka as dated by the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) method. On the basis of grain size, magnetic susceptibility and palynological data, six episodes of the climatic change were identified in Xunhua basin; they include very warm and humid period during 120–114 ka, cool and dry period during 114–105 ka, warm and humid period during 105–98 ka, gradually cooling period during 98–85 ka, warm and humid period during 85–75 ka, very cold and dry period during 75–63 ka. The six stages of climatic change recorded in Xunhua basin correspond to the marine oxygen isotope stages (MIS) of 5e, 5d, 5c, 5b, 5a and 4, respectively.

This paper assesses the hazardousness, vulnerability and risk of debris flow and landslide in China and compiles maps with a scale of 1∶6000000, based on Geographical Information System (GIS) technology, hazard regionalization map, socioeconomic data from 2000. Integrated hazardousness of debris flow and landslide is equivalent to the sum of debris flow hazardousness and landslide hazardousness. Vulnerability is assessed by employing a simplified assessment model. Risk is calculated by the following formula: Risk= Hazardousness × Vulnerability. The analysis results of assessment of hazardousness, vulnerability and risk show that there are extremely high risk regions of 104 km², high risk regions of 283008 km², moderate risk regions of 3161815 km², low risk regions of 3299604 km², and extremely low risk regions of 2681709 km². Exploitation activities should be prohibited in extremely high risk and high risk regions and restricted in moderate risk regions. The present study on risk analysis of debris flow and landslide not only sheds new light on the future work in this direction but also provides a scientific basis for disaster prevention and mitigation policy making.

The spatial resolution of general circulation models (GCMs) is too coarse to represent regional climate variations at the regional, basin, and local scales required for many environmental modeling and impact assessments. Weather research and forecasting model (WRF) is a next-generation, fully compressible, Euler non-hydrostatic mesoscale forecast model with a run-time hydrostatic option. This model is useful for downscaling weather and climate at the scales from one kilometer to thousands of kilometers, and is useful for deriving meteorological parameters required for hydrological simulation too. The objective of this paper is to validate WRF simulating 5 km/1 h air temperatures by daily observed data of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) stations, and by hourly in-situ data of the Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research Project. The daily validation shows that the WRF simulation has good agreement with the observed data; the R² between the WRF simulation and each station is more than 0.93; the absolute of meanbias error (MBE) for each station is less than 2°C; and the MBEs of Ejina, Mazongshan and Alxa stations are near zero, with R² is more than 0.98, which can be taken as an unbiased estimation. The hourly validation shows that the WRF simulation can capture the basic trend of observed data, the MBE of each site is approximately 2°C, the R² of each site is more than 0.80, with the highest at 0.95, and the computed and observed surface air temperature series show a significantly similar trend.

Particulate matter (PM₁₀ and PM_2.5) concentrations were monitored during the November 2008 by using the filter samples collected day and night from three sites in Tanggu District at Tianjin Binhai New Area, China. The mean concentrations of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ rank in the order of urban (150 μg/m³ for PM_2.5 and 197 μg/m³ for PM₁₀)>industrial (32 μg/m³ for PM_2.5 and 170 μg/m³ for PM₁₀)>suburb area (27 μg/m³ for PM_2.5 and 59 μg/m³ for PM₁₀). Sixteen polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were analyzed in PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 samples. Concentrations of total PAHs in PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ are in the range of 8.47–113.94 ng/m³ with average of 62.88 ng/m³ and 21.07–118.23 ng/m³ with average of 73.42 ng/m³, respectively. The light ring PAHs (2–4 rings) are dominant in both PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ during sampling time compares with the heavy ring (5–6 rings) PAHs. The relationship of PAHs and PM_2.5 (r = 0.689, p<0.05) is stronger than PAHs and PM₁₀ (r = 0.570, p<0.05), illustrating PAHs tend to adsorb in PM_2.5. In addition, principal component analysis was applied to find the source of PAHs. Three principal factors representing three types of PAHs sources in Tanggu District are extracted, which were coke production, pyrogenic sources and vehicular source.

The global water resources network is simulated in the present work for the latest target year with statistical data available and with the most detailed data disaggregation. A top-down approach of systems input-output simulation is employed to track the embodied water flows associated with economic flows for the globalized economy in 2004. The numerical simulation provides a database of embodied water intensities for all economic commodities from 4928 producers, based on which the differences between direct and indirect water using efficiencies at the global scale are discussed. The direct and embodied water uses are analyzed at continental level. Besides, the commodity demand in terms of monetary expenditure and the water demand in terms of embodied water use are compared for the world as well as for three major water using regions, i.e., India, China, and the United States. Results show that food product contributes to a significant fraction for water demand, despite the value varies significantly with respect to the economic status of region.