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The Japanese City Planning Act aims to control urban sprawl and promote compact urban development. Despite Japan's aging population, urban sprawl remains a concern in shrinking sprawl situations. This impacts ecosystem services owing to the loss of natural areas. Ecological quality is regarded as a basic parameter for preventing urban sprawl. This study examined urban sprawl, ecological quality, and their relationship in Chiba Prefecture within the spatial context of the metropolitan region. Utilizing Shannon entropy and landscape metrics for urban sprawling studies, the analysis revealed a gradual shift towards compact development at the center, while the urban periphery was unevenly distributed. The remote sensing ecological index (RSEI), supported by remote sensing, assesses ecological quality. Despite some limitations, the average RSEI indicated moderate quality, offering a suitable human environment. Pearson's calculations were used to determine the inverse correlation between urban sprawl and ecological quality. Chiba's slight increase in sprawl was attributed to the transition from non-compact to eco-city development. The proposed plans were formulated based on similar urban sprawl and RSEI patterns in other cities for further sustainable compact development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese City Planning Act aims to control urban sprawl and promote compact urban development. Despite Japan’s aging population, urban sprawl remains a concern in shrinking sprawl situations. This impacts ecosystem services owing to the loss of natural areas. Ecological quality is regarded as a basic parameter for preventing urban sprawl. This study examined urban sprawl, ecological quality, and their relationship in Chiba Prefecture within the spatial context of the metropolitan region. Utilizing Shannon entropy and landscape metrics for urban sprawling studies, the analysis revealed a gradual shift towards compact development at the center, while the urban periphery was unevenly distributed. The remote sensing ecological index (RSEI), supported by remote sensing, assesses ecological quality. Despite some limitations, the average RSEI indicated moderate quality, offering a suitable human environment. Pearson’s calculations were used to determine the inverse correlation between urban sprawl and ecological quality. Chiba’s slight increase in sprawl was attributed to the transition from non-compact to eco-city development. The proposed plans were formulated based on similar urban sprawl and RSEI patterns in other cities for further sustainable compact development.

In Côte d'Ivoire, the political-military crisis from 2002 to 2011 caused an intensification of human pressure on certain protected areas. This increased pressure has led to significant deforestation in the Mont Péko national Park. However, the impact of disturbances on the forest cover structure of this park is little known. The purpose of this study was to document the impact of the crisis on the fragmentation of the forest cover of Mont Péko national Park in order to contribute to its rehabilitation. Thus, the structural dynamics of the landscape were analyzed using metrics of landscape ecology derived from four thematic digital maps from Landsat satellite imagery, throughout the periods before, during and after the crisis. Analysis of landscape spatial transformation processes between 1988 and 2016 showed a growing trend in forest cover fragmentation. Statistics on selected landscape metrics were produced to quantify the structural changes resulting from this fragmentation. Analysis of landscape metrics showed a significant increase in the level of fragmentation of forest cover during and after the period of crisis. The overall structural dynamics of the landscape of the Mont Péko national Park during the periods studied reveals a fragmentation of the forest at the expense of the creation of cocoa plantations. There is therefore an urgent need to strengthen the supervisory capacity of managers in order to eradicate the scourge of cocoa cultivation in the Mont Péko national Park.

The availability of remote sensing images of various resolutions has enabled the incorporation of landscape structures in land-cover mapping. Despite the effectiveness of landscape metrics in quantifying landscape structures, they are inadequate in characterizing three elements: spatial neighborhoods, spatial dependencies, and semantic dependencies. Moreover, methods for mining the regularity of landscape-structure heterogeneity (i.e., spatial variations in landscape structures) are still limited, particularly for applications in urban land-cover mapping. This study hence proposes a novel approach with the aims to (1) characterize landscape structures considering the above three elements; (2) mine the regularity of landscape-structure heterogeneity; and (3) apply landscape-structure information as contexts to improve urban land-cover mapping. To achieve the first aim, landscape-structure features including pair-wise spatial relationships and neighborhood-based landscape metrics are defined. To accomplish the second aim, a clustering technique and a landscape infographic are used to cluster landscape structures and visualize landscape-structure types, respectively. Finally, a hierarchical classifier based on the feedforward multi-layer perceptron is developed for the third aim. Experiments are conducted in a heterogeneous urban environment in Beijing, China. The results show that the proposed approach, which considers 34 landscape-structure features and 19 landscape-structure types, achieves a classification accuracy improvement of 6.43% compared with the approaches without considering landscape-structure information. This study therefore demonstrates the effectiveness of incorporating landscape-structure features and landscape-structure types in improving urban land-cover mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An urban fringe area, depicted as a typical ecotone, is a region where both social and environmental problems are concentrated. Identifying and evaluating the spatial–temporal characteristics of urban fringe areas is significant for future development. On the basis of the land use data extracted from remote sensing data, the Shannon diversity index (SHDI) of each unit can be calculated, and identifying the urban fringe area by the breakpoint method is reliable. By using the rapidly growing Changchun as example, this study identifies the urban fringe of Changchun in 1995, 2005, and 2015 by applying the breakpoint method. The expansion amount, change mode, direction of expansion, landscape, and influence factors are evaluated. Policy and planning are the main factors influencing the development direction of the Changchun fringe area. The urban fringe area of Changchun City is extended to the east, southeast, and north. From 1995 to 2005, the outlying expansion was the dominant type. The main change mode was the infilling type due to the reduction of available land, from 2005 to 2015. In accordance with the landscape metrics, the landscape within the urban fringe transformed from fragmentation to regularization. The development of the urban fringe also transformed from a disorderly to an orderly manner.

Malaria remains one of the most common vector-borne diseases in the world and the definition of novel control strategies can benefit from the modeling of transmission processes. However, data-driven models are often difficult to build, as data are very often incomplete, heterogeneous in nature and in quality, and/or biased. In this context, a knowledge-based approach is proposed to build a robust and general landscape-based hazard index for malaria transmission that is tailored to the Amazonian region. A partial knowledge-based model of the risk of malaria transmission in the Amazonian region, based on landscape features and extracted from a systematic literature review, was used. Spatialization of the model was obtained by generating land use and land cover maps of the cross-border area between French Guiana and Brazil, followed by computing and combining landscape metrics to build a set of normalized landscape-based hazard indices. An empirical selection of the best index was performed by comparing the indices in terms of adequacy with the knowledge-based model, intelligibility and correlation with P. falciparum incidence rates. The selected index is easy to interpret and successfully represents the current knowledge about the role played by landscape patterns in malaria transmission within the study area. It was significantly associated with P. falciparum incidence rates, using the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients (up to 0.79 and 0.75, respectively; p-value < 0.001), and the linear regression coefficient of determination (reaching 0.63; p-values < 0.001). This study establishes a spatial knowledge-driven, landscape-based hazard malaria index using remote sensing that can be easily produced on a regular basis and might be useful for malaria prediction, surveillance, and control.

China's economic development over the past three decades has been remarkable due to the establishment of the 'Reform and Opening-up' program. Meanwhile, urbanization, one of the most intensive human activities, has significantly changed the land cover across China. Here we used remote sensing data and landscape metrics to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization in two large Chinese cities, Chengdu (1978-2010) and Chongqing (1976-2010). Results suggested that urban land in both cities experienced a significant growth and became 9.8 and 6.3 times larger than the initial for Chengdu and Chongqing, respectively. The edge-expansion was the major urban growth form for both cities, accounting for more than 40 % of total three types (i.e., edge-expansion, infilling, and outlying) although fluctuating during the whole period. Both cities started a spurt growth in the 1990s although the starting times were different (1992 and 1996 for Chengdu and Chongqing, respectively) because of different policies. Spatial distribution of the newly developed urban lands was largely constrained by topography. Landscape analysis not only revealed an increasing fragmentation and complexity in the study area under the impact of urbanization, but also tested the hypothesis on urbanization patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of urban and peri-urban change represents a major challenge for local authorities, especially in areas at risk (ex. flood) and representing an ecological potential. The Bruche lower valley (Bas-Rhin, France) is increasingly urbanized under pressure from Strasbourg. The monitoring of the settlement process was achieved over a period of 20 years to identify the phases of urbanization and their consequences. The multi-temporal remote sensing images of Spot acquired in 1986, 1996 and 2005 and "spatial metric" were jointly used to identify the main forms of evolution of land-cover during this period and to characterize the landscape changes. The results highlight a trend of increasing density and sprawl process in the valley accompanied by a significant change of the landscape structure. The paper is structured in four sections. First, related works on monitoring of land-use/cover are exposed. Second, image processing are presented and the application of various landscape metrics. Third, the description of results is detailed. Finally, conclusion and perspective approaches are discussed.

Valley landscapes are a major stake in environmental management. Diagnoses are necessary in order to understand the valley landscapes at the regional scale. A morphometric approach showed the importance of the valleys (hillslopes, valley bottoms) in the structure of the regional landscape and the existence of “ordinary valleys” with banal forms. In this context, the aim of this paper is to propose a methodology to characterize their internal diversity and to assess their singularity beyond the context. Landscape metrics are calculated to quantify valley structures. There are extracted from land cover attributes obtained by remote sensing data (Spot Imagery). This quantitative approach is applied on a well-known valley by qualitative criteria.

Urban heat island (UHI) effect has a close relation to land covers type. This paper investigates the relationship between land cover ratio and UHI in Guangzhou, south of China using remote sensing and automatic weather stations data. The temperature data were obtained by Automatic weather stations (AWS) of Guangzhou in October, 2004, at the same time with the CBERS remote sensing image acquired. Firstly, the hourly mean temperature was computed from hourly AWS data. Secondly, the CBERS remote sensing image was classified using support vector machine (SVM) and land covers classification were output. Thirdly, the classification result was overlapped with a round buffer with 1.5 KM radius centered on the AWS, and then the land cover ratio, Edge Density (ED) and Mean Fractal Dimension (MFRACT) of buffers were computed out. Finally, the correlation coefficient between hourly mean temperature and land cover ratio, ED and MFRACT was calculated. It concluded that UHI intensity was heavier during nighttime than daytime. Stations with higher vegetation ratio and higher ED had lower heat island effect. On the contrary, stations with higher impervious ratio and lower ED had more serious heat island effect. The positive-negative of correlation coefficient between hourly mean temperature and vegetation ratio during 11:00-17:00 h (local time) was opposite to that during other time. ED was negatively correlated with hourly mean temperature except during 11:00-17:00 h. On the contrary, MFRACT was positively correlated with hourly mean temperature. It implied that fragmentations of patches were favorable to UHI alleviation, and complexities of patch were unfavorable factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographic information system (GIS), remote sensing (RS), gradient analysis, and landscape pattern metrics were coupled to quantitatively characterize the spatiotemporal change of land use and landscape pattern over the period 1988–2007 in a coastal gulf region, southeast China. The results obtained show an increase in cropland, buildup land, and aquiculture area and decrease in orchard, woodland, and beach area during 1988–2007. Landscape fragmented processes were strengthened and landscape pattern structure became more complicated in the last two decades in Luoyuan gulf region. The dynamics intensity of landscape pattern is stronger during 2002–2007 than that during 1988–2002. Spatial difference of urban–rural landscape pattern can be detected distinctively in two transects in terms of landscape metrics. Urbanization processes and the policy developed to transfer seawater into buildup land are two driving forces leading to the spatiotemporal change of landscape pattern in Luoyuan gulf region in the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An urban fringe area, depicted as a typical ecotone, is a region where both social and environmental problems are concentrated. Identifying and evaluating the spatial–temporal characteristics of urban fringe areas is significant for future development. On the basis of the land use data extracted from remote sensing data, the Shannon diversity index (SHDI) of each unit can be calculated, and identifying the urban fringe area by the breakpoint method is reliable. By using the rapidly growing Changchun as example, this study identifies the urban fringe of Changchun in 1995, 2005, and 2015 by applying the breakpoint method. The expansion amount, change mode, direction of expansion, landscape, and influence factors are evaluated. Policy and planning are the main factors influencing the development direction of the Changchun fringe area. The urban fringe area of Changchun City is extended to the east, southeast, and north. From 1995 to 2005, the outlying expansion was the dominant type. The main change mode was the infilling type due to the reduction of available land, from 2005 to 2015. In accordance with the landscape metrics, the landscape within the urban fringe transformed from fragmentation to regularization. The development of the urban fringe also transformed from a disorderly to an orderly manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]