Revealing Kunming’s (China) historical urban planning policies through Local Climate Zones

Over the last decade, Kunming has been subject to a strong urbanisation driven by rapid economic growth and socio-economic, topographical and proximity factors. As this urbanisation is expected to continue in the future, it is important to understand its environmental impacts and the role that spatial planning strategies and urbanisation regulations can play herein. This is addressed by (1) quantifying the cities' expansion and intra-urban restructuring using Local Climate Zones (LCZs) for three periods in time (2005, 2011 and 2017) based on the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tool (WUDAPT) protocol, and (2) cross-referencing observed land-use and land-cover changes with existing planning regulations. The results of the surveys on urban development show that, between 2005 and 2011, the city showed spatial expansion, whereas between 2011 and 2017, densification mainly occurred within the existing urban extent. Between 2005 and 2017, the fraction of open LCZs increased, with the largest increase taking place between 2011 and 2017. The largest decrease was seen for low the plants (LCZ D) and agricultural greenhouse (LCZ H) categories. As the potential of LCZs as, for example, a heat stress assessment tool has been shown elsewhere, understanding the relation between policy strategies and LCZ changes is important to take rational urban planning strategies toward sustainable city development

Socioeconomic contexts for the spatial variations of ecosystem services and the associated uncertainties

Ecosystem services are strongly underpinned by ecological processes and functions and influenced by socioeconomics in human-environmental systems. As the prerequisites for human well-being, ecosystem services can reflect the interactions of human and environmental systems. Being pervading the process of ecosystem service assessments, uncertainties should be uncovered and preferably reduced before the assessing results are adopted for the decision-making of regional environmental management. This study explores the interrelationships between ecosystem services and socioeconomic variables at regional scales, develops a methodological framework of uncertainty analysis and applies it to investigate the uncertainties emerged in the assessments of ecosystem services of the study areas. Chapter 1 provides a brief review of the fields concerning the ecosystem service issues addressed in this thesis. The introduction involves the basic concepts related to ecosystem services, the state of the art of ecosystem service quantification and mapping, the role of ecosystem services in human-environmental systems, ecosystem services’ linkages with socioeconomics as well as the uncertainties in ecosystem service assessments. After uncovering the respective research gaps, this chapter identifies and elucidates the objectives of the study and raises the associated four research questions. Chapter 2 explores the socioeconomic influences on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being at the regional scale of Jiangsu, China on the basis of the DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) conceptual model. Additionally, the study investigates the quantitative linkages between the five sectors of the DPSIR model. The results show that urbanization and industrialization in the urban areas can have positive influences on regional biodiversity, agricultural productivity, tourism services and rural residents’ living standards. Besides, the knowledge, technology and finance inputs for agriculture have positive impacts on these system components. Concerning regional carbon storage, non-cropland vegetation cover obviously plays a significant positive role. Contrarily, the expansion of farming land and the increase of total food production are two important negative influential factors of biodiversity, ecosystems’ food provisioning capacity, regional tourism income and the well-being of the rural population. Finally, the linkages of the DPSIR sectors in a network pattern are quantitatively evidenced. Chapter 3 characterizes the urban-rural gradients of ecosystem services and socioeconomics of Leipzig, Germany and Kunming, China. It further quantifies the linkages between the gradients of ecosystem services and socioeconomics and conducts gradient comparisons between different gradient patterns in the two study areas. The chapter ends with the revelation of the uncertainties in creating the gradients. The results show some similar regularities in the spatial patterns of ecosystem services and socioeconomic dimensions in both study areas. Habitat quality and f-evapotranspiration of Leipzig and habitat quality of Kunming demonstrate apparent trends of increases along all gradient patterns. However, the other ecosystem services present divergent spatial variability in different gradient patterns. Road density, urban fabric and population density show identical declining trends in both study areas except for the soaring of population density around the center of Leipzig. Differently, household size, housing area and unemployment rate in Leipzig present inconsistent spatial dynamics with considerable fluctuations. Regarding the gradient interrelations, road density, urban fabric and population density are strongly correlated with most ecosystem service types in both case study areas. In contrast, the gradients of household size, housing area and unemployment rate of Leipzig show inconsistent correlations with the ecosystem services gradients. The introduced uncertainty gradient method shows appropriateness to quantitatively capture the uncertainties in exploring ecosystem services and socioeconomic gradients in urban-rural areas. Chapter 4 addresses the spatial characteristics of ecosystem services and the respective socioeconomic influences in a heavily human-disturbed watershed in Southwest China. It firstly quantifies and maps five ecosystem services of nine river basins of the Dianchi Lake Watershed. The quantification is based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model and the biophysical and socioeconomic data. Thereafter, a confirmatory research is conducted by using a hypothesis-test methodology to investigate the socioeconomic causes of the spatial changes of the five ecosystem services. On the basis of the modeling results of nitrogen retention and water yield, this chapter exemplifies the distinctions between ecosystem services potential, flow and demand and performs a sensitivity analysis to test the influences of input data and parameter uncertainties on the modeling results. The hypothesis-test analysis reveals only a small number of socioeconomic influential factors, most of which are related to land use structure. The hypothesis-test methodology provided in this study is applicable in the investigation of socioeconomic influences on ecosystem services in the situation of socioeconomic data uncertainty and scarcity. Chapter 5 summarizes the sources of uncertainties in landscape analysis and ecosystem service assessments and proposes a methodology to analyze and reduce the uncertainties. The fundamental uncertainty origins of landscape analysis are landscape complexity and methodological uncertainties. The major uncertainty sources of ecosystem service assessments include the complexity of the natural system, respondents’ preferences and technical problems. Among these uncertainty source categories, initial data uncertainty pervades the whole assessment process and the limited knowledge about the complexity of ecosystems is the focal uncertainty origin. To analyze the uncertainties in assessments, systems analysis, scenario simulation and the comparison method are promising strategies. Lastly, we assume that the actions to reduce uncertainties should integrate continuous learning, expanding respondent numbers and sources, considering representativeness, improving and standardizing assessment methods and optimizing spatial and geobiophysical data. Chapter 6 reaches the general conclusions of this thesis. It firstly answers the four research questions asked in the introduction. In the answers, the close connections between ecosystem services and socioeconomics are confirmed, the applicability of the mainstreaming quantification methods is debated, the strength of ecosystem service mapping is illustrated and the necessity and possibility of uncertainty analysis are argued. In ending the entire thesis, chapter 6 further generally evaluates the ecosystem service approach and identifies and main obstacles and problems in the application of ecosystem services. Moreover, it proposes potential solutions to the overcome the impediments and finally calls for an optimistic attitude to propel ecosystem services research

都市水害が多発するプノンペン市を対象とした集水域に基づく土地利用計画の手法の開発

早大学位記番号:新7632早稲田大

Land use changes and salinization: Impacts on lake phosphorus cycling and water quality

Over the past few decades, there has been a rapid global increase in urbanization accompanied by the conversion of natural or agricultural land into more impervious land cover. This ongoing acceleration of global urbanization has raised significant concerns regarding the deterioration of water quality in urban lakes, such as worsening eutrophication symptoms. Eutrophication of inland waters, primarily driven by phosphorus (P) enrichment caused by human activities, is characterized by increased primary production that, in the most extreme cases, results in harmful algal blooms. Additionally, anthropogenic salinization has emerged as another stressor affecting the health of urban freshwater ecosystems. Although the ecological ramifications of both P enrichment and salinization on freshwater ecosystems are recognized, their combined impacts on water quality have hitherto been considered separately. The work presented in this thesis is based on an extensive acquisition and analysis of data for a lake currently located along the edge of the Greater Toronto metropolitan area: Lake Wilcox. Before the most recent phase of rapid urban development, the lake’s watershed underwent the conversion of its original forested land cover to agricultural use. Based on the data, I investigated the following questions: (1) How did the successive historical changes in land use/land cover (LULC) impact the water quality and P cycling in the lake?; (2) How has the rapid expansion of imperviousness during urban growth impacted the lake’s eutrophication symptoms, in particular, the oxygenation of the deeper water and the remobilization of P from the bottom sediments?; (3) How effective have agricultural and urban stormwater best management practices been in mitigating the external input of P to Lake Wilcox?; (4) Of the road salt applied in the watershed during winter, how much reaches the lake and how much is retained in the watershed?; and (5) What is the rate of salinization of Lake Wilcox and management intervention could help the lake recover from excessive use of the road salt? To address these research questions for Lake Wilcox, I combined sediment core analyses, statistical data time series tests, and mass balance modeling. I further evaluated the transferability of the findings for Lake Wilcox to other lakes in North America. In this final research activity, I tested the key hypothesis that emerged from my work on Lake Wilcox, namely that the changes in a freshwater lake’s mixing regime caused by salinization exacerbates eutrophication symptoms, even in cases where the external P inputs to the lake are reduced. In chapter 2, a dated sediment core, recent water quality data, and historical records were used to reconstruct changes in P loading to and cycling in Lake Wilcox associated with changes in land use/land cover (LULC) since the 1920s. The lake’s originally forested watershed was cleared for farming and, starting in the 1950s underwent agricultural intensification. Since the 1980’s, urbanization rapidly increased the watershed’s impervious land cover, now accounting for about 60% of the total surface area. The results illustrate the absolute and relative changes in P external and internal loading resulting from the LULC changes and the implementation of various agricultural and urban stormwater management practices. By analyzing the sediment core data, I reconstructed the historical P loading patterns, as well as the response of the lake's P dynamics to the evolving human activities in the watershed. The results of this chapter highlight the large differences in the impact of agricultural versus urban land use on the lake’s P budget and cycling, and on other aspects of the lake’s biogeochemistry. Chapter 3 focuses on the most recent phase of rapid urbanization of Lake Wilcox’ watershed. Of particular interest is to understand why Lake Wilcox remains in an apparent eutrophic state even though external P inputs to the lake have been declining since the 1980s. I analyzed 22 years of water chemistry, land use, and climate data (1996–2018) using principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple linear regression (MLR) to identify the contributions of climate and urbanization to the observed changes in water chemistry. The results show that the progressive salinization of the lake impacts the lake mixing regime by strengthening thermal stratification during summer. A major consequence is a worsening oxygen depletion of the hypolimnion that increases internal P recycling in the lake. My research therefore establishes a novel link between salinization and eutrophication symptoms. Building on the significant increase in salinity presented in the earlier chapters, Chapter 4 delves into a deeper investigation of the road salt management practices in the watershed of Lake Wilcox. I delineate the changes in geochemical water type in the period 2000-2020 while using mass balance calculations for dissolved chloride and sodium to reconstruct the yearly salt loading to the lake and the amounts of salt ions that are retained within the watershed. Results showed that further increase in salinity may eventually inhibit the fall overturn of the lake. They also point to the large salt legacies accumulating in the watershed, likely in soil and groundwater compartments. The fate of these legacies will require further research to determine the long-term risks they pose to water resources and receiving aquatic ecosystems. In chapter 5, I use water chemistry data for several other urban lakes in Ontario, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to analyze how lake salinization intersects with water temperature and lake morphometry to modify lake stratification. The goal is to determine to what extent salinization in these lakes can cause eutrophication-like symptoms such as those seen in Lake Wilcox. Trend analyses of chemical and physical variables are carried out for all the lakes, and the Brunt-Väisälä frequency is used as a measure of the summer stratification intensity. The results consistently indicate that salinity is becoming an increasingly stronger regulator of water density than temperature in urban freshwater lakes experiencing cold winters. Overall, my research demonstrates that rising salinity can have a significant impact on water column stratification of freshwater lakes. This, in turn, can reduce the oxygenation of the hypolimnion and enhance internal P loading from the sediments. These findings thus highlight that the management of salt inputs to urban lakes, including de-icing salt applications in cold and cold-temperate regions, should be taken into consideration to control lake eutrophication symptoms

Origin and Fate of Odorous Metabolites, 2-Methylisoborneol and Geosmin, in a Eutrophic Reservoir

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Taste-and-Odor (T&O) occurrences are a worldwide problem and can locally have extensive socio-economic impacts in contaminated waterbodies. Tracing odorous compounds in surface waters or controlling the growth of producing organisms is particularly challenging. These approaches require the understanding of complex interactions between broad climate heterogeneity, large-scale physical processes such basin hydrology, lake/reservoir circulation, responses of aquatic ecosystems and communities. Eagle Creek Reservoir (ECR), a eutrophic water body, located in central Indiana experiences annual odorous outbreaks of variable durations and intensities that can impair its water quality. Two major compounds, 2-methylisoborneol and geosmin, have been identified as the main culprits occurring seasonally when the reservoir receives high discharges and nutrient loads from its main tributaries. Under these conditions, the growth of T&O-producing bacteria tends to take over other phytoplanktic organisms. Discrete samples collected within the water column during severe outbreaks in 2013 revealed that some bacterioplankton members belonging to Actinobacteria (Streptomyces) and Cyanobacteria (Planktothrix) were involved in the generation of T&O compounds. Most of this production occurred in the upper layers of the water column where higher abundances of key enzymes from MIB and geosmin metabolic pathways were detected. Application of a copper-based algaecide to curb the biosynthesis of bacterial metabolites led to geosmin production (linked to Cyanobacteria) being quickly terminated, whereas MIB levels (linked to Actinobacteria) lingered for several weeks after the algaecide treatment. Significant chemical differences in the association of these metabolites were measured in ECR. Geosmin was dominantly found cell-bound and settling after cellular death increases susceptibility to biodegradation in bottom sediments. MIB was mostly found dissolved making it less susceptible to biodegradation in bottom sediments. Genetic data identified Novosphingobium hassiacum and Sphingomonas oligophenolica (α- Proteobacteria) as potential degraders of geosmin and, four Flavobacterium species (Bacteroidetes) as potential MIB degraders. The role of Eagle Creek natural sediments in the removal of bacterial metabolites via chemical adsorption was also tested but was not proven efficient. Bacterial breakdown activity was demonstrated to be the major loss mechanism of MIB and geosmin

Modelling the impacts of land-used and climate change in Skudai river watershed

Predicting the impact of land-use, climate change and Best Management Practices (BMPs) on a watershed is imperative for effective management of aquatic ecosystems, floods, pollutant control and maintenance of water quality standard in a tropical climate. Based on the prediction, unique information can be derived that is critical to the watershed management under dynamic environmental conditions. The study seeks to evaluate how land-use and climate change influences the hydrology, sediments, and water quality of an urbanized tropical watershed in which the land-use is controlled by urban development as observed from historical and projected land covers. Therefore, the response of a tropica l watershed and its river system under climate and land-use changes were evaluated using Skudai River watershed as a case study. Seven land-use scenarios from the year 1989 to 2039 were developed using remote sensing teclmiques, and nine projected climate change scenarios were derived using dynamically downscaled model from the based projection under representative concentration pathways (RCPs) scenarios. These scenarios were integrated into the Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) model to determine the impact of land-use , climate change, and pollutants control via best management practices in a tropical watershed system. The model was calibrated and validated from 2002 to 2014, and the performance coefficients showed a good correlation between simulated and observed streamflow, water temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), nitrate nitrogen (N03-N), and orthophosphate (P04) concentrations. The output of the validated model under land-use changes showed that the hydrological water balance of the watershed changes with total runoff as the primary source of water loss. For streamflows and in-stream concentrations (NH3-N, N03-N, and P04) , as the streamflow increases, NH3-N and P04 concentrations increase while N03-N concentration showed low response as compared to the other two concentrations. As urban development increased from 18.2% to 49.2%, nutrient influx such as total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loads increased from 3080 to 4560 kg/yr and from 130 to 270 kg/yr, respectively. Furthermore, TN to TP ratio changed from 8.3:1 to 7:1, an indication that the rivers are receiving excess nutrients flows which might result in eutrophication at the downstream of the watershed . The amount of sediment load produced in the watershed decreased by approximately 17.8% as a result of the changes in land-use derived from urban development. Further analysis ofthe results showed that climate change with high rainfall and increase in air temperature do not affect DO concentration and water temperature in comparison to climate change with low rainfall. Implementation of multiple detention pond BMPs in identified Critical Source Areas (CSAs) reduced pollutant loads by 14% to 27% as compared to watershed without any BMPS, independent ofclimate and landuse changes. Analysis ofBMPs using existing and future land-use is very important to ensure their effectiveness to control and maintain water quality. This study provides a basis to develop water resource management in an urban watershed and be resilient to land-use and climate changes

Studies on Water Management Issues

This book shares knowledge gained through water management related research. It describes a broad range of approaches and technologies, of which have been developed and used by researchers for managing water resource problems. This multidisciplinary book covers water management issues under surface water management, groundwater management, water quality management, and water resource planning management subtopics. The main objective of this book is to enable a better understanding of these perspectives relating to water management practices. This book is expected to be useful to researchers, policy-makers, and non-governmental organizations working on water related projects in countries worldwide

Considerations For Source Water Protection In Ontario

Source water protection under the Ontario Clean Water Act (2006) emerged after the fatal E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario in 2000. It is the protection of raw drinking water at its source, and it is carried out at a local watershed and municipal level primarily through land use planning tools and stewardship in Ontario. The scope of source water protection is limited to anthropocentric considerations, and therefore it misses the opportunity to protect watersheds for the sake of ecosystem integrity and to conserve the many critical ecosystem services provided by watersheds. There are numerous threats to watersheds and other considerations that are not currently addressed by the regulation that undermine effective source water protection, such as groundwater quantity, urban growth, and existing contaminated lands. In addition, a jurisdictional gap has led to a water crisis in many First Nations communities, for whom contaminated source water is a primary concern. However, source water protection in First Nations communities is made difficult by external and internal threats, and as a tool, it is neither holistic nor aligned with traditional water management practices. Management of watersheds and water sources requires complex solutions and strong governance and institutions. Global freshwater resources are under unprecedented strain, and the lessons from Ontario can be emulated and expanded upon to achieve sustainability and ecosystem integrity

Water-Wise Cities and Sustainable Water Systems

Building water-wise cities is a pressing need nowadays in both developed and developing countries. This is mainly due to the limitation of the available water resources and aging infrastructure to meet the needs of adapting to social and environmental changes and for urban liveability. This is the first book to provide comprehensive insights into theoretical, systematic, and engineering aspects of water-wise cities with a broad coverage of global issues. The book aims to (1) provide a theoretical framework of water-wise cities and associated sustainable water systems including key concepts and principles, (2) provide a brand-new thinking on the design and management of sustainable urban water systems of various scales towards a paradigm shift under the resource and environmental constraints, and (3) provide a technological perspective with successful case studies of technology selection, integration, and optimization on the “fit-for-purpose” basis