Water samples were collected for determination of dissolved trace metals in 56 sampling sites throughout the upper Han River, China.
Climate change, water supply limits, growing environmental values of water and worldwide population growth continue to raise the scarcity of water. These challenges have intensified the transfer of water from farms to cities. Water right transfers are an important international institution to stretch water supplies.
Land use and land cover change, perhaps the most significant anthropogenic disturbance to the environment, mainly due to rapid urbanization/industrialization and large scale agricultural activities.
Among other issues, the degrading environmental and ecological situations, the low performance scrambled city form and the loss of cultural identity in Beijing City have proved that the conventional ‘population projection-urban infrastructure-land use’ approach and the architectural urbanism approach to urban growth planning failed to meet the challenges of swift urbanisation and sustainability
Green Belt policies have helped to create chaotic landscapes at the rural–urban interfaces of the United Kingdom's largest cities. Their prime functions, to control urban sprawl and preserve an encircling green girdle to separate the urban from the open countryside, have created ‘edgelands’ that have been remarkably dynamic despite relatively strong controls on certain types of development.
Peri-urban areas are often characterized by valuable natural environments that provide essential life-support functions and ecosystem services for urban residents. Global environmental change has raised concerns over how urbanization and land use and land cover change affect ecosystem services.
Managing urban growth in the current rapid urbanization process has become a key issue for land use policy in transformation China. This paper maps and assesses the performance of urban containment strategies in China, looking at the case of Beijing over a 19-year period (1990–2009).
The urbanisation process in East Jerusalem has been described as a still process, in other words, a frozen or even rarely-developed process. This paper explores the Green and Open Landscape concept as one of the dominant factors described in the Jerusalem Master Plan. This factor is one that restrains urbanisation and hinders expansion of the Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.
Non-Urbanised Areas (NUAs) are part of agricultural and green infrastructures that provide ecosystem services. Their role is fundamental for the minimization of urban pollution and adaptation to climate change. Like all natural ecosystems, NUAs are endangered by urban sprawl. The regulation of sprawl is a key issue for land-use planning.
This paper addresses two important issues for large Mediterranean city regions: the differential impact of compact urban ‘growth’ and low-density ‘sprawl’ on land cover changes (LCCs), and their final effect on changing land cover relationships (LCRs).
Mediterranean areas of both southern Europe and North Africa are subject to dramatic changes that will affect the sustainability, quantity, quality, and management of water resources. Most climate models forecast an increase in temperature and a decrease in precipitation at the end of the 21st century.
Biological indicators can be used both to estimate ecological condition and to suggest plausible causes of ecosystem degradation across the U.S. Great Lakes coastal region. Here we use data on breeding bird, diatom, fish, invertebrate, and wetland plant communities to develop robust indicators of ecological condition of the U.S. Lake Superior coastal zone.