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Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC) has gradually became an important direction in the research of global changes. LUCC is a complex system, and entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder of a system. According to land use information entropy, this paper analyzes changes in land use from the perspective of the system. Research on the entropy of LUCC structures has a certain "guiding role" for the optimization and adjustment of regional land use structure. Based on the five periods of LUCC data from the year of 1990 to 2010, this paper focuses on analyzing three types of LUCC entropies among counties in China--namely, Shannon, Renyi, and Tsallis entropies. The findings suggest that: (1) Shannon entropy can reflect the volatility of the LUCC, that Renyi and Tsallis entropies also have this function when their parameter has a positive value, and that Renyi and Tsallis entropies can reflect the extreme case of the LUCC when their parameter has a negative value.; (2) The entropy of China's LUCC is uneven in time and space distributions, and that there is a large trend during 1990-2010, the central region generally has high entropy in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the effect of cyclic loading on drained residual strength of over-consolidated silty clay is examined based on the results from ring shear tests which were conducted with a sophisticated ring shear apparatus. Initially sheared to form shear zones under different pre-consolidation pressures and at different shear rates (SRs), soil samples were then tested under cyclic loading. After the cyclic loading application, the samples were re-sheared while the corresponding shear strengths were measured. The results show that the effect of cyclic loading on residual strength is noticeable. The effect is related to pre-consolidation history and SR of the soil samples. Under conditions of relatively low over-consolidation ratio (OCR), the soil samples show an increase in residual strength with decreasing SR after cyclic loading. Most of the peak strength values after cyclic loading are higher than the residual strength values obtained before cyclic loading. Two effects of cyclic loading on the residual strength are identified: (a) If OCR is less than or equal to 3.0, the residual strengths measured after cyclic loading are larger than those before cyclic loading; (b) If OCR is greater than or equal to 3.5, the residual strengths after cyclic loading tend to become lower than those in the shear tests before cyclic loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]