Applied Geography最新文献

Islands used to present environmental and social peculiarities because of their specific-related aspects, like boundedness, smallness, and isolation, that may shape spatial development patterns on island territories. Assessing inequalities in drinking water supply and sanitation is crucial to tracking progress toward universal and equitable access on islands. There are 1200 islands in the Brazilian Coastal Zone, where about 3.9 million inhabitants live. A geographic database was structured to quantify coverage and geographical inequalities in access to drinking water supply and sanitation among Brazilian maritime islands' inhabitants. Results demonstrated that Brazilian maritime island inhabitants still face severe challenges in accessing drinking water supply and sanitation. About 20% of the Brazilian maritime island inhabitants (over 730,000 people) need access to an improved drinking water supply. Another 60% (over 2,2 million) need access to improved sanitation. Inequalities within and between the Brazilian Federal States are substantial, both in urban and rural areas, mainly in the North and Northeast Brazilian regions. These results suggest the need for greater attention on the Brazilian island territory and inhabitants’ demands. These estimates can be used to guide decisions and track progress toward global and national commitments to promoting universal access to water and sanitation for all.

Green development is essential for improving urban land use efficiency (ULUE) as it seeks to optimize resource utilization and minimize waste and pollution. However, a long-term evolution of ULUE and its determinants under the context of green development are less discussed in existing studies. Drawing on remote sensing and statistical data and utilizing the super efficiency slack-based model (SBM) and the geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model, this study evaluates green development-oriented ULUE and its spatiotemporal associations with determinants across 284 cities and eight economic zones in China from 2005 to 2019. We found that the green development-oriented ULUE in China generally increased in 15 years (from 0.404 to 0.55), with higher levels in coastal and northwestern regions than in central regions. Besides, per capita GDP, investment in technology and science, and degree of openness generally contributed to ULUE (over 75% observations showed positive coefficients), while investment in real estate had a negative impact on ULUE. The impact of industrial structure on ULUE experienced a transition from positive to negative in northern and eastern cities, with the highest coefficient decreasing from 0.194 in 2005 to −0.032 in 2019. Population density contributed to ULUE in southern and northwestern cities during 2005–2010 (coefficients ranging from 0.008 to 0.198), while it negatively influenced ULUE in most cities since 2015 (coefficients ranging from −0.009 to −0.283). The correlation between nighttime light, per capita road, and ULUE showed noticeable south-north differentiation. Our study provides valuable guidelines for Tailor-made strategies of efficient urban management towards sustainable urbanization.

Sustainable land management (SLM) as a holistic method seeks to combine ecological values with socio-cultural and policy concepts, through which local populations play a significant role in achieving this management. Qasr Yaqoub village was selected for the present study, which is located in Safashahr city in Fars province, south of Iran. The common method of herding in Qasr Yaqoub village is participatory and in the form of assistance systems. Therefore, in order to have a comprehensive evaluation of the stability of the local stakeholder network in different dimensions of sustainability and social networks, two methods of indicators analysis including social network analysis (SNA) and sustainability barometer model (SBM) were used. The index values for trust and social cooperation ties among stakeholders in the local stakeholders' network in Qasr Yaqoub village, consisting of 42 individuals, were found to be 63.1% and 59.8%, respectively. These values indicate a stable density in the trust network and an average density in the cooperation network among stakeholders in the region. In addition, the social network index, which measures the extent of connections, is 1086 for trust and 1030 for social cooperation, both covering more than 50% of the expected ties. This signifies a significant level of interaction between stakeholders regarding relevant issues, facilitating the promotion of social cohesion in the study area. These findings highlight the positive dynamics within the stakeholder network, fostering trust, cooperation, and social cohesion in Qasr Yaqoub village. This study showed that the combination of network analysis and sustainability barometer model could be a useful tool in the sustainability analysis of local communities in rangeland ecosystems.

Forest transition and urban shrinkage have received increased attention in national ecological conservation (NEC) and local development (LD) with the urgent to attain sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, few studies have concerned with the impacts of forest transition on urban shrinkage, which limits an in-depth understanding of the relationship between NEC and LD. The study aims to bridge this gap based on an analysis framework of the relationship between forest transition and urban shrinkage. We used Yichun City, one of the representative forest-based cities in China, as a case study to quantitatively analyze the impacts of forest transition on urban shrinkage by conducting the baseline regression and the threshold regression models from 1973 to 2018. The results show that forest transition exerts triggering effects on urban shrinkage via combination of socioeconomic dynamics and NEC policy. The underlying mechanisms of the effects are concluded as a causal chain with the triggering factor of industrial diversity: ‘NEC policy – forest transition – socioeconomic dynamics – urban shrinkage’. This study provides significant insight into the trade-off between NEC and LD in that the national policy for promoting natural ecosystem recovery may sacrifice local development, which challenges sustainable development both at the national and local levels. For this reason, policy implications have been proposed to achieve the win-win options of NEC and LD, including differentiated policies on forest management and industrial structure upgrading strategies based on industry diversification.

This study collected the annual revenue data of the top three supermarket chains in Taiwan (PX Mart, Simple Mart, and Wellcome), shopping frequency in supermarkets, and the average expenditure of the general public in order to construct models for simulating supermarket revenue by calibrating model parameters to the actual data. This study employed the competing destinations model (CDM) to designate supermarket shoppers' shopping areas and simulate supermarket sales. The CDM calculated the probability of consumers selecting each supermarket, simulated the total revenues of supermarkets and the average daily revenue of a single store using the expenditure equation, and added spatial competition and agglomeration effect parameters to the model to observe variations in revenue with changing parameter values. The study results revealed profitable expansion opportunities and highly competitive locations not advised for new outlets. Beitou district had the lowest population density in Taipei City yet a high-sales cluster, making it an area suitable for new PX Mart stores. Shilin and Xinyi districts could also be considered suitable areas for new stores because they had insignificant distributions of stores, high-sales clusters, and competition was not yet severe. The study extends the use of analytical revenue and spatial models to empirically study the agglomeration forces between supermarket chains, analyzes the influence of distance variation on supermarket revenues, and determines the most suitable locations for the future inauguration of supermarket stores in Taipei City.

There has been growing interest in understanding how industrial variation and locational preferences are connected in recent years. However, little research has focused on the geographic disparities of industrial activities within megacities in terms of their spatial and functional variations. This study aims to addresses this issue by examining industrial agglomerations in China's Greater Bay Area (GBA) using points of interest (POIs) data. By extracting keywords from POIs' names that provide valuable insights into the specific characteristics of local industrial sectors, it first identifies different thematic topics related to industrial activities using topic modeling. Industrial agglomerations are then clustered, given their topic importance, in order to depict the spatial and functional variation within the region. In this connection, a dual-center layout with distinct professional tendencies is reported in the central and southeastern GBA. These two subregions are further selected and investigated to understand their spatial-functional characteristics and locational preferences. Our findings indicate that the garment and electronic sectors are the dominant sectors in the central and southeastern subregions, respectively, whereby industries can obtain more competitive advantages by concentrating geographically. Practical implications of regional industrial activities, including upgrading conventional manufacturing modes and spatial-functional inequality, are discussed.

There are substantial changes in global green cover owing to anthropogenic activities and climate change. Here, we estimate the long-term changes in India's green cover, and its contribution from croplands and forests using satellite-based Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Leaf Area Index (LAI) for the period of 2000–2019. The change in Solar Induced Fluorescence (SiF) is also estimated to understand the variability in the photosynthetic activity and productivity. The increase in NDVI (10%), LAI (11%) and SiF (13%) suggests that India has been greening in the past two decades, which added 996640 km² of new leaf area during the period. The net vegetated land in India is substantially greening (62.5% area) and marginally browning (14% area). Interestingly, the magnitude of greening in croplands is twice the forests, and is predominant in Zaid (70% area) agricultural season. Therefore, the croplands drive (86.5% contribution) greening of India in the past two decades. The enhanced greening of croplands can be attributed to improved irrigation facilities, as demonstrated by the larger Net Irrigated Area (NIA) and Irrigated Sown Area (ISA). In addition, the effective cropland management, farm mechanisation and use of nitrogen fertilisers are also key to this cropland-based greening in India.

In recent decades, cropland policies have been recognized as crucial tools for ensuring food security and managing urban growth. However, whether cropland conservation undermines urban land use efficiency (ULUE) in peri-urban areas has not been adequately studied. This study investigated the impact of cropland on ULUE in the peri-urban areas of 36 rapidly urbanizing metropolitan areas in China. Multiple open-source datasets were used, including land use, land cover, three-dimensional building structure, and nighttime light (NTL) data. Urban construction land patterns (infilling, edge, outlying) were categorized to examine the intermediate role of urban form in the correlation between cropland and ULUE. The findings indicated that: (1) high proportion of cropland area within the peri-urban areas significantly undermined ULUE; (2) although the conservation of cropland is conducive to compact urban growth, the infilling expansion pattern that compelled by cropland conservation would not sustain intensive human activity; and (3) reducing the spatial separation between conserved cropland and urban construction land was conducive to the dual objectives of protecting cropland and promoting ULUE. This study contributed to the development of a nuanced understanding of cropland protection policies that balance national food security and urbanization efficiency.