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Effects of Human Activity on the Third Pole and Trade-Offs for a Sustainable Plateau

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (23 October 2023) | Viewed by 7866

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Changqing Song

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Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Interests: synthetic ggeography; human-earth System Coupling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Peichao Gao

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Guest Editor

Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Interests: sustainable land use; geographic trade-offs; geographic complexity; spatial entropy as applied in landscapes and image analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Wenhui Kuang

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Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Interests: urban land-system dynamic and ecological remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As the third pole of our world, the Tibetan Plateau serves a fundamentally important role in regulating global and regional climate. However, the Plateau is facing many social, economic, environmental, resource and geo-security issues due to the intensification of human activities. This Special Issue aims to provide a deeper understanding of the state, process, and trend of human living environment and human wellbeing in the Plateau, and to provide practical and feasible strategies for the long-term governance and high-quality development of the Plateau. This Issue calls for submissions on the following topics:

1) Spatial and temporal differences in the structure and intensity of human activities, with the objectives of revealing the spatial and temporal characteristics of human activities on the Tibetan Plateau, clarifying the intensity and scope of human activities, and analyzing the dynamic processes and change patterns of human activities;

2) Health and safety assessment of the human living environment, with the objectives of clarifying the constraints on the safety of the living environment on the Tibetan Plateau and the key factors affecting human health;

3) Indicators and indices on the sustainable, high-quality development of the Plateau, such as building a comprehensive assessment index system of human well-being or high-quality development;

4) Simulation of human living environment (e.g., land change) and human well-being, to diagnose, weigh, and predict the changes of human living environment and human well-being on the Tibetan Plateau;

5) Tools, algorithms, and methods (e.g., land-use simulation models) that apply to, or have a potential to be applied to, the study of the effects of human activity on the Third Pole and trade-offs for a sustainable plateau; and

6) Regional economic and political environments of the Tibetan Plateau, such as spatio-temporal patterns of the economic and political interactions between the plateau and its surrounding countries.

Prof. Dr. Changqing Song
Dr. Peichao Gao
Prof. Dr. Wenhui Kuang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Tibetan Plateau
human activity
third Pole
trade-offs
sustainable plateau

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 7904 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dynamic Monitoring and Ecological Risk Analysis of Lake Inundation Areas in Tibetan Plateau

by Dongchuan Wang, Hua Chai, Zhiheng Wang, Kangjian Wang, Hongyi Wang, Hui Long, Jianshe Gao, Aoze Wei and Sirun Wang

Sustainability 2022, 14(20), 13332; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013332 - 17 Oct 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1000

Abstract

Lake inundation is one of the most important hydrological factors affecting lake ecosystems. In order to accurately and timely grasp the spatio-temporal pattern of the lake inundation area, and reveal the ecological evolution of the lake landscape, this paper quantifies the inundation dynamics of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau in the past 20 years and analyzes the spatio-temporal characteristics of the inundation area from four aspects: the region, type, altitude and recharge mode of the lake. Combined with the water inundation frequency, the landscape inundation frequency index is constructed and applied to the landscape ecological risk index to explore the spatio-temporal dynamic changes of landscape ecological risk in the inundation area. The results show that the change of the lake-inundated area first decreases and then increases in 2000–2020, the salt lakes and low-altitude lakes have the largest inundation areas, accounting for 83.2% and 55.6% of the total inundated area, respectively; the change intensity of lake inundation frequency is relatively large, and the alternate changes of the lake water–land junction area are enhanced, and the area of permanent lake increases; inundation has the greatest impact on bare land and grassy landscapes; the study area is dominated by lower-risk and lowest-risk areas, accounting for 84.9% of the total area of risk areas, but most areas are transformed from lower-lowest risk to medium-higher risk. This study provides a case of dynamic monitoring of lake inundation areas, which is helpful to formulate ecological restoration and risk prevention measures in lake inundation areas, and can also be used for ecological risk research in similar areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Human Activity on the Third Pole and Trade-Offs for a Sustainable Plateau)

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19 pages, 7685 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial-Temporal Evolution and Influencing Mechanism of Traffic Dominance in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

by Dongchuan Wang, Kangjian Wang, Zhiheng Wang, Hongkui Fan, Hua Chai, Hongyi Wang, Hui Long, Jianshe Gao and Jiacheng Xu

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 11031; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141711031 - 04 Sep 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1440

Abstract

Transportation is an important resource for the sustainable development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It is of great practical significance to evaluate and study the law and mechanism of spatial and temporal differentiation of traffic dominance degree. Based on the methods of the Origin-Destination cost matrix, least squares method, and geographically weighted regression, this paper establishes a traffic dominance evaluation system at the county scale and discusses the spatial pattern and influence of traffic dominance in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from 2015 to 2019. The results show that: (1) The overall traffic construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been accelerated, and the traffic accessibility between counties has been significantly enhanced; (2) The traffic dominance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is significantly different from east to west, and the central area, with “Xining-Lhasa” as the axis, expands to the outer circle with an irregularly decreasing spatial pattern; and (3) The effect of rapid urbanization development and population carrying capacity enhancement on the traffic dominance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has gradually increased, and the effect of elevation has been weakening from 2015 to 2019. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Human Activity on the Third Pole and Trade-Offs for a Sustainable Plateau)

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19 pages, 2130 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Measurement and Prediction of Coupling Coordination Level of Economic Development, Social Stability and Ecological Environment in Qinghai—Thoughts on Sustainable Societal Safety

by Shuai Ye, Yuejing Ge, Shiyu Xu and Xiaofan Ma

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10515; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710515 - 23 Aug 2022

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2060

Abstract

Societal safety is the result of the coordinated development of several subsystems; the coupling–coordination relationship among economic development (ED), social stability (SS), and ecological environment (EE) is the premise of realizing sustainable societal safety (SSS). Taking Qinghai Province as an example, this paper quantitatively evaluates the development index of each subsystem by constructing ED-SS-EE evaluation index system, then analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution of ED, SS, and EE coupling coordination levels based on the coupling coordination model, and finally predicts the coupling coordination level of ED, SS, and EE by using the GM(1.1) model. The findings are as follows: (1) The economy is developing rapidly, but the regional development is extremely uneven; ED is driving SS, and SS lags behind ED and slowly improves; EE is improving continuously, and the spatial pattern is relatively stable. (2) The ED, SS, and EE systems have a high degree of coupling, showing a fluctuating upward trend. Coordination level is low, showing a slow upward trend, and the regional differences are obvious. (3) In the future, the coordination level of ED, SS, and EE systems in different regions will be upgraded from the level of near imbalance and barely coordination to the level of intermediate coordination, good coordination, and even high-quality coordination. The spatio-temporal description of ED, SS, and EE coupling coordination level not only reveals the development trend and problems of SSS in Qinghai, it also proves the feasibility of evaluating societal safety level based on the coupling coordination level of sustainable social structure system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Human Activity on the Third Pole and Trade-Offs for a Sustainable Plateau)

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22 pages, 4945 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatio-Temporal Synergy between Urban Built-Up Areas and Poverty Transformation in Tibet

by Yiting Su, Jing Li, Dongchuan Wang, Jiabao Yue and Xingguang Yan

Sustainability 2022, 14(14), 8773; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148773 - 18 Jul 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1243

Abstract

Understanding the causes of poverty and identifying the transformation characteristics of poverty is the basis for achieving poverty eradication. In order to clarify the availability of construction land for poverty assessment, this paper explores the spatio-temporal synergy between urban built-up areas and poverty transformation in Tibet. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) the built-up areas in Tibetan counties have been growing from 2013 to 2019; (2) the proportion of counties with very low and low levels of relative poverty have decreased significantly, and the overall spatial characteristics of poverty are “high in the center and low in the surroundings”; (3) the overall coupling-coordination level between the built-up areas and the relative poverty level is gradually improving from the initial antagonism, and the relative-poverty index shows a significant negative correlation with coupling coordination (correlation coefficient of −0.63); and (4) the built-up area has a strong explanatory power for the spatial distribution of regional relative-poverty transfer compared to temperature, precipitation, elevation, and slope. The results of the study prove that the built-up area cannot be directly used as an indicator factor when constructing the multidimensional relative-poverty model and, instead, should use urban built-up areas by region to participate in poverty-estimation models based on regional economic development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Human Activity on the Third Pole and Trade-Offs for a Sustainable Plateau)

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19 pages, 10481 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Distinguishing the Impacts of Human Activities and Climate Change on the Livelihood Environment of Pastoralists in the Qinghai Lake Basin

by Zhiyuan Song, Ziyi Gao, Xianming Yang and Yuejing Ge

Sustainability 2022, 14(14), 8402; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148402 - 08 Jul 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1221

Abstract

Grassland vegetation is the largest terrestrial ecosystem in the Qinghai Lake Basin (QLB), and it is also the most important means of production for herders’ livelihoods. Quantifying the impact of climate change and human activities on grassland vegetation changes is an essential task for ensuring the sustainable livelihood of pastoralists. To this end, we investigated vegetation cover changes in the QLB from 2000 to 2020 using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), meteorological raster data, and digital elevation and used residual analysis of multiple linear regression to evaluate the residuals of human activities. The residual analysis of partial derivatives was used to quantify the contribution of climate change and human activities to changes in vegetation cover. The results showed that: (1) The vegetation coverage of the QLB increased significantly (0.002/a, p < 0.01), with 91.38% of the area showing a greening trend, and 8.62% of the area suffering a degrading trend. The NDVI decreased substantially along the altitude gradient (−0.02/a, p < 0.01), with the highest vegetation coverage at 3600–3700 m (0.37/a). The vegetation degraded from 3200–3300 m, vegetation greening accelerated from 3300–3500 m, and vegetation greening slowed above 3500 m. (2) The contribution of climate change, temperature (T), and precipitation (P) to vegetation cover change were 1.62/a, 0.005/a, and 1.615/a, respectively. Below 3500 m, the vegetation greening was more limited by P. Above 3500 m, the vegetation greening was mainly limited by T. (3) Residual analysis showed that the contribution of human activities to vegetation cover was −1.618/a. Regarding the altitude gradient, at 3300–3500 m, human activities had the highest negative contribution to vegetation coverage (−2.389/a), and at 3200–3300 m, they had the highest positive contribution (0.389/a). In the past 21 years, the impact of human activities on vegetation coverage changed from negative to positive. Before 2009, the annual average NDVIres value was negative; after 2010, the average yearly NDVIres value turned positive. In general, the vegetation greening of the QLB depends on climate warming and humidification. The positive impact of human activities over the past decade was also essential for vegetation greening. These findings deepen our understanding of the QLB vegetation changes under climate change and human activities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Human Activity on the Third Pole and Trade-Offs for a Sustainable Plateau)

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