An effective Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system can improve the reliability, safety and economic benefits of a microgrid operation. In this research, the lower central controller and upper WEB (World Wide Web) monitoring system are connected by the SCADA system, which is the hub of a microgrid intelligent monitoring platform. This system contains a set of specific functions programmed by Java as a middleware and can provide communication and control functions between the central controller and the upper monitoring system. For the sake of security and stability of the microgrid, the SCADA system realizes business processing on real-time data acquisition and storage, load balancing and resource recovery, concurrent security processing, and control instruction parsing and transmission. All those functions were tested and verified in actual operation. Full article

In recent decades, the monitoring of vegetation dynamics has become crucial because of its important role in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, a satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was combined with climate factors to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of vegetation change during the growing season, as well as their driving forces in China from 2001 to 2012. Our results showed that the growing season NDVI increased continuously during 2001–2012, with a linear trend of 1.4%/10 years (p < 0.01). The NDVI in north China mainly exhibited an increasing spatial trend, but this trend was generally decreasing in south China. The vegetation dynamics were mainly at a moderate intensity level in both the increasing and decreasing areas. The significantly increasing trend in the NDVI for arid and semi-arid areas of northwest China was attributed mainly to an increasing trend in the NDVI during the spring, whereas that for the north and northeast of China was due to an increasing trend in the NDVI during the summer and autumn. Different vegetation types exhibited great variation in their trends, where the grass-forb community had the highest linear trend of 2%/10 years (p < 0.05), followed by meadow, and needle-leaf forest with the lowest increasing trend, i.e., a linear trend of 0.3%/10 years. Our results also suggested that the cumulative precipitation during the growing season had a dominant effect on the vegetation dynamics compared with temperature for all six vegetation types. In addition, the response of different vegetation types to climate variability exhibited considerable differences. In terms of anthropological activity, our statistical analyses showed that there was a strong correlation between the cumulative afforestation area and NDVI during the study period, especially in a pilot region for ecological restoration, thereby suggesting the important role of ecological restoration programs in ecological recovery throughout China in the last decade. Full article

In recent decades, climate change has affected vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau’s Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region in central China using MODIS-NDVI data for 2000–2014. We examined the roles of regional climate change and human activities in vegetation restoration, particularly from 1999 when conversion of sloping farmland to forestland or grassland began under the national Grain-for-Green program. Our results indicated a general upward trend in average NDVI values in the study area. The region’s annual growth rate greatly exceeded those of the Three-North Shelter Forest, the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the Qinling–Daba Mountains, and the Three-River Headwater region. The green vegetation zone has been annually extending from the southeast toward the northwest, with about 97.4% of the region evidencing an upward trend in vegetation cover. The NDVI trend and fluctuation characteristics indicate the occurrence of vegetation restoration in the study region, with gradual vegetation stabilization associated with 15 years of ecological engineering projects. Under favorable climatic conditions, increasing local vegetation cover is primarily attributable to ecosystem reconstruction projects. However, our findings indicate a growing risk of vegetation degradation in the northern part of Shaanxi Province as a result of energy production facilities and chemical industry infrastructure, and increasing exploitation of mineral resources. Full article

Changes in biodiversity owing to vegetation degradation resulting from widespread urbanization demands serious attention. However, the connection between vegetation degradation and urbanization appears to be complex and nonlinear, and deserves a series of long-term observations. On the basis of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the image’s digital number (DN) in nighttime stable light data (NTL), we delineated the spatiotemporal relations between urbanization and vegetation degradation of different metropolises by using a simplified NTL calibration method and Theil-Sen regression. The results showed clear and noticeable spatiotemporal differences. On spatial relations, rapidly urbanized cities were found to have a high probability of vegetation degradation, but in reality, not all of them experience sharp vegetation degradation. On temporal characteristics, the degradation degree was found to vary during different periods, which may depend on different stages of urbanization and climate history. These results verify that under the scenario of a vegetation restoration effort combined with increasing demand for a high-quality urban environment, the urbanization process will not necessarily result in vegetation degradation on a large scale. The positive effects of urban vegetation restoration should be emphasized since there has been an increase in demand for improved urban environmental quality. However, slight vegetation degradation is still observed when NDVI in an urbanized area is compared with NDVI in the outside buffer. It is worthwhile to pay attention to landscape sustainability and reduce the negative urbanization effects by urban landscape planning. Full article