Search Results (18)

As urbanization accelerates and climate change intensifies, cities are increasingly facing risks from natural disasters and human activities. Enhancing urban resilience and strengthening cities’ ability to adapt and recover from disasters have become hot topics globally. Although urban resilience evaluation has been studied from different dimensions, the study of urban resilience from a practitioner’s perspective has received less attention. In this study, based on 1464 valid samples of practitioners in Huangshi City, a structural equation model (SEM) was applied to evaluate urban resilience. The evaluation indicators framework was selected from the economy, ecology, society, and infrastructure dimensions. The findings show that (1) the SEM model provides a scientific basis for establishing an index system for the comprehensive evaluation of urban resilience, and the corresponding correlation coefficients help determine the relative contribution of each indicator. (2) Social resilience accounts for the largest proportion of the entire evaluation system, followed by infrastructure resilience, ecological resilience, and economic resilience. (3) Taking Huangshi City as an empirical research case, the results show that the resilience assessment method based on SEM is feasible, with the resilience of Huangshi City showing an upward trend from 2013 to 2022. Finally, some plausible measures to improve urban resilience based on the evaluation results are discussed. Full article

In the post-industrial era, many cities have experienced the decline of heavy industry and traditional manufacturing, leading to the widespread emergence of brownfields. These often cluster geographically, forming “brownfield clusters” characterized by shared spatial and functional traits. Our research examined these phenomena within 10 resource-exhausted cities in China, employing kernel density analysis to explore the spatial dynamics within and among these clusters and their urban contexts. We identified three distinct spatial relationships between brownfield clusters and their host cities (coupling, juxtaposition, and encircling), with a detailed case study in Huangshi City further classifying the clusters into five categories based on their dominant factors, spatial morphologies, types of brownfields, and internal dynamics. The study reveals that the spatial configurations of brownfield clusters are significantly influenced by geographic features, transportation infrastructure, and policy frameworks. Based on these findings, we propose targeted regeneration strategies for each cluster type. This research not only enhances our understanding of brownfield challenges and opportunities in China’s resource-exhausted cities but also serves as a valuable reference for other cities and regions worldwide facing similar challenges. Full article

Examining medical supply–demand imbalances, as revealed through patients’ cross-boundary treatment behaviors, is vital for reducing a metropolitan area’s medical supply–demand gap and furthering sustainable development goals. This study, leveraging medical supply–demand and commuting data, scrutinizes medical imbalances in the Wuhan metropolitan area core. It includes a ‘People-centered’ theory for elucidating patients’ treatment behaviors, proposes a method for constructing a regional medical supply–demand network, and explores the problem of supply–demand imbalance. The key findings include: (1) Wuhan’s central area, despite its abundance of quality medical resources, fails to adequately cover the entire metropolitan area, indicating a need for broader resource distribution. (2) The Ezhou–Huangshi–Huanggang junction shows a stark contrast to Wuhan with its limited medical services and extensive hinterland connections. Future initiatives should aim to integrate resources dispersed from Wuhan, reducing regional disparities. (3) The city’s periphery, influenced by resource distribution models and geographic distance, exhibits significant variance from central urban areas in medical supply–demand connectivity, particularly around Wuhan’s eastern administrative boundaries. Future urban planning is needed to reinforce this area’s role as a vital medical services conduit. (4) The distinguishing differences among the nine medical service communities in terms of resource recognition, service sharing, and patient mobility provide policy guidance for the allocation of medical resources. Full article

In order to study the pollution characteristics, sources, and health risks of heavy metals in urban atmospheric PM_2.5, samples were collected in Huangshi City from June 2021 to May 2022. The contents of 16 kinds of metal elements were analyzed by XRF, and the pollution degree and sources of elements were analyzed by the enrichment factor method, correlation analysis, and cluster analysis. The health risk of heavy metal elements was evaluated by the USEPA health risk assessment model. The results of enrichment factor analysis show that the metal elements carried by PM_2.5 were affected by human emissions except for Ti. Heavy metals mainly come from industrial sources, motor vehicle sources, mixed combustion sources, and dust sources, according to correlation analysis and cluster analysis. Mn had a non-carcinogenic risk to children, and the non-carcinogenic risk of other elements to the human body was generally acceptable. The carcinogenic risks of Cr, As, Cd, and Co exceeded the acceptable carcinogenic risk threshold (10⁻⁶ ~10⁻⁴), and there were potential carcinogenic risks. Full article

In the context of global warming, the Wuhan Urban Agglomeration is actively responding to China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals and striving to achieve a reduction in carbon sources and an increase in carbon sinks. Therefore, it is critical to investigate carbon emissions from land use. This study uses the carbon emission coefficient method to calculate carbon emissions from land use in the Wuhan Urban Agglomeration, analyzes its temporal and spatial changes and differences in urban structure, and couples with the Markov–PLUS model to simulate and predict the carbon emissions of four scenarios of land use in 2035. The research found the following: (1) during the Wuhan “1+8” City Circle stage, carbon sources and emissions increased steadily, with average annual growth rates of 1.92% and 1.99%, respectively. Carbon sinks remained stable and then decreased, with an average annual growth rate of −0.46%. (2) During the Wuhan Metropolitan Area stage—except for 2020 and 2021, which were affected by COVID-19—carbon sources, sinks, and emissions continued to grow in general, and the average annual growth rates increased to 4.46%, 1.58%, and 4.51%, respectively. (3) In terms of urban structure differences, Wuhan is a high-carbon optimization zone; Xianning, Huangshi, and Huanggang are ecological protection zones; other cities, such as Ezhou, Xiaogan, and Xiantao are comprehensive optimization zones; and there is no low-carbon development zone. (4) The multi-scenario simulation results show that carbon sources and emissions are the highest under the economic development scenario, with values of 100.2952 and 9858.83 million tons, respectively, followed by cropland protection, natural development, and low-carbon development scenarios. Under low-carbon development, carbon sinks were the highest, with values of 1.9709 million tons, followed by natural development, economic development, and cropland protection scenarios. The research results are conducive to the formulation of carbon peak and neutrality goals as well as low-carbon development plans for the Wuhan Urban Agglomeration. Full article

Water quality grade is an intuitive element for people to understand the condition of water quality. However, in situ water quality grade measurements are often labor intensive, which makes measurement over large areas very costly and laborious. In recent years, numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of remote sensing techniques in monitoring water quality. In order to automatically extract the water quality information, machine learning technologies have been widely applied in remote sensing data interoperation. In this study, Landsat-8 data and deep neural networks (DNN) were employed to identify the water quality grades of lakes in two cities, Wuhan and Huangshi, in the middle reach of the Yangtze River, central China. Additionally, linear support vector machine (L-SVM), random forest (RF), decision tree (DT), and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) were selected as comparative methods. The experimental results showed that DNN achieved the most promising performance compared to the other approaches. For the lakes in Wuhan, DNN gave water quality results with overall accuracy (OA) of 93.37% and Kappa of 0.9028. For the lakes in Huangshi, OA and kappa given by DNN were 96.39% and 0.951, respectively. The results show that the use of remote sensing images for water quality grade monitoring is effective. In the future, our method can be used for water quality monitoring of lakes in large areas at a low cost. Full article

Ambient bioaerosols affect ecosystems and public health, but their seasonal variations and their contributions to aerosol particles are limitedly understood. Ambient bioaerosols in PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ samples were measured in Huangshi City, Hubei Province of China from April 2018 to December 2018. Bioaerosols were measured using a fluorescence microscope after staining with 4′, 6-diamino-2-phenylindole dihydrochloride (DAPI) following a direct staining technique. The bioaerosol number concentrations ranged from 0.12 to 15.69 # cm⁻³ for PM_2.5 and 0.22 to 18.20 # cm⁻³ for PM₁₀, with averages of 2.79 # cm⁻³ and 4.66 # cm⁻³, respectively. The bioaerosol concentrations of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ varied significantly by seasons and were arranged in the following descending order: spring > fall > winter > summer. Bioaerosol numbers were dominated by fine particles of 0.37–2.5 μm diameter, while the spring bioaerosol particles were detected at the peak concentration of 0.56–1 μm diameter. Bioaerosol fractions accounted for 18.3 ± 10.6% PM₁₀ mass and 13.7 ± 12.5% PM_2.5 mass. Bioaerosol concentrations were increased during the haze event, but the increased amounts were not as large as those of the dust event, and higher bioaerosol contributions to PM were observed in the dust event than in the haze event. As enhanced emission controls have reduced PM concentrations in China, bioaerosols can be important contributors to PM mass. Full article

Loss of matric suction during rain has an important effect on the instability of expansive soil slope. A new device was designed for testing the expansive force in order to propose and determine the equivalent expansive force corresponding to the matric suction. First, the internal relation between the matric suction and the corresponding equivalent expansive force of unsaturated expansive soil was analyzed. Then, numerical algorithm implementation of the equivalent expansive force was discussed, and the equivalent expansive force was introduced into the strength reduction finite element method (FEM). Finally, the equivalent effects of the matric suction and the equivalent expansive force were compared and analyzed by evaluating the stability of an unsaturated expansive soil slope. The results show that the new testing device significantly improves the accuracy of the expansive force test and shortens the testing time. The relation between the matric suction and the equivalent expansive force with the change in initial water content is obvious. The equivalent expansive force can reflect the macro contribution of matric suction to unsaturated expansive soil, and the developed strength reduction FEM based on the equivalent expansive force can be used to evaluate the rainfall-induced instability of an expansive soil slope caused by the decrease in matric suction resulting from the rainfall infiltration. Full article

When tests are conducted on the field slope under artificial rainfall, because artificial rainfall is often limited to implementation in the mode of local rainfall, there is a boundary constraint effect between the rainfall area and the non-rainfall area, which is manifested in the lateral infiltration of rainwater and the slope deformation retardation of non-rainfall area to the rainfall area. Firstly, a deep-buried isolated trench was proposed to solve these boundary constraints. Then, field cracking tests and the corresponding numerical simulation were conducted under rainfall. In the end, the response of water content and the cracking failure characteristics of the slope were analyzed during rainfall, and the effect of a deep-buried isolated trench on the cracking characteristics of the slope was evaluated. The results indicate that the proposed deep-buried isolated trench measure can effectively eliminate the deformation retardation resulting from the adjacent non-rainfall area so a through-crack parallel to the slope shoulder that extended on both sides of the boundary of the rainfall slope was observed at the slope crest and a cracking failure in the shape of the overall downward cutting was realized. As the crack occurred, the rainwater infiltration further aggravated expansion of depthwise cracks, and a local sliding zone was formed in the upper part of the slope. The deep-buried isolated trench solves the boundary constraints, such as lateral infiltration of rainwater and deformation retardation, and can provide an effective technical measure for the field slope test under artificial rainfall. Full article

As an important carbon sink indicator, the vegetation net primary productivity (NPP) is key and helpful for understanding regional carbon sequestration and storage of mining areas. Systematic analysis of NPP of the ecological reconstruction process in mining areas can effectively contribute to local governments and related departments for making ecological decisions under the “double carbon goals” (“peak of carbon release” and “carbon neutrality”) and help to promote regional sustainable development. In this study, we used the CASA model to systematically assess the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of NPP of Huangshi City from 1990 to 2018. Meanwhile, various scenarios were set up to study the effects of climate factors, landscape pattern evolution, and ecological restoration on regional carbon storage. Our results documented that (1) NPP of the study area an increasing trend from 1990–2018 shows and exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity; (2) the significant increase of NPP was mainly in the restored mining areas, indicating that the ecological restoration of mining areas can effectively improve the regional carbon sequestration capacity; (3) from 1990 to 2018, climate change released 0.136 TgC, while landscape pattern change contributed to carbon storage with 0.266 TgC; and (4) the restoration and reconstruction of vegetation in the mining areas is an important way to achieve carbon neutrality of Huangshi City in the future, and the changes of NPP varied among different ecological restoration modes. Full article

Exploring the interaction relationship between urbanization and ecological security is the key issue to achieve regional sustainable development. This study used coupling coordination model and vector auto-regression model to comprehensively investigate the interaction relationship between urbanization and ecological security in Wuhan City Circle from 2005 to 2018. The results showed that urbanization quality in Wuhan City Circle increased from 0.1818 in 2005 to 0.4355 in 2018, with an average annual increase rate of 10.74%. The ecological security of Wuhan City Circle decreased from 0.4890 in 2005 to 0.4511 in 2015 and increased from 0.4511 in 2015 to 0.4554 in 2018. The degree of coupling coordination between urbanization and ecological security of Wuhan City Circle presented a circle structure with Wuhan as the center and increasing outward. Additionally, the impulse analysis showed that the increase of urbanization had a significant negative impact on ecological security of Wuhan city, Huangshi city, and Xiaogan city. Meanwhile, the ecological security index of Ezhou city, Tianmen city, Huanggang city, Xiantao city, Xianning city, and Qianjiang city were all positive in early stage after the ecological security was impacted by the increase of urbanization. The analysis of historical data and future trends can provide operable recommendations for urbanization development and ecological security protection through cleaner production and efficient use of natural resources from the aspect of coordinated development. Full article

Mitigation measures and control strategies relating to the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been widely applied in many countries to reduce the transmission of this pandemic disease. China was the first country to implement a strong lockdown policy to control COVID-19 when countries worldwide were struggling to manage COVID-19 cases. However, lockdown causes numerous changes to air-quality patterns due to the low amount of traffic and the decreased human mobility it results in. To study the impact of the strict control measures of the new COVID-19 epidemic on the air quality of Hubei in early 2020, the air-quality monitoring data of Hubei’s four cities, namely Huangshi, Yichang, Jingzhou, and Wuhan, from 2019 to 2021, specifically 1 January to 30 August, was examined to analyze the characteristics of the temporal and spatial distribution. All air-quality pollutants decreased during the active-COVID-19 period, with a maximum decrease of 26% observed in ${\mathrm{PM}}_{10}$, followed by 23% of ${\mathrm{PM}}_{2.5}$, and a minimum decrease of 5% observed in ${\mathrm{O}}_3$. Changes in air pollutants from 2017 to 2021 were also compared, and a decrease in all pollutants through to 2020 was found. The air-quality index (AQI) recorded an increase of 2% post-COVID-19, which shows that air quality will worsen in future, but it decreased by 22% during the active-COVID-19 period. A path analysis model was developed to further understand the relationship between the AQI and air-quality patterns. This path analysis shows a strong correlation between the AQI and ${\mathrm{PM}}_{10}$ and ${\mathrm{PM}}_{2.5}$, however its correlation with other air pollutants is weak. Regression analysis shows a similar pattern of there being a strong relationship between AQI and ${\mathrm{PM}}_{10}$ ($r^2$ = 0.97) and ${\mathrm{PM}}_{2.5}$ ($r^2$ = 0.93). Although the COVID-19 pandemic had numerous negative effects on human health and the global economy, it is likely that the reduction in air pollution and the significant improvement in ambient air quality due to lockdowns provided substantial short-term health benefits. The government must implement policies to control the environmental issues which are causing poor air quality in post-COVID-19. Full article

Resource-based cities are cities that depend on the exploitation and primary processing of natural resources, such as minerals, metals, and oil, and whose rise and development are highly dependent on resources. Due to over exploitation, many problems related to ecosystem degradation have been caused. Ecological restoration of land space is urgent. One of the difficulties in carrying out ecological restoration of territorial space lies in the identification of key areas for ecological restoration and diagnosis of regional ecological problems. In this study, we applied the spatial assessment of ecological sensitivity and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model to quantitatively analyze the overall ecosystem in Huangshi city so as to delimit the ecological restoration division of Huangshi City. The results showed that: (1) The overall distribution rule is that vegetation, such as that in mountains and forests, is dense, the sensitivity around water and wetlands is high, and the distribution of mines in Huangshi is high. (2) For the period 1980–2018, the habitat quality index of Huangshi was good, with a slight decreasing trend. The simulated habitat quality distribution was consistent with the region-dominated land cover type. (3) Huangshi formed a spatial pattern with natural protected areas as the priority protection areas, mining areas as the key restoration areas, and natural protected areas and mining areas as the general restoration areas. (4) During the period of 1980–2018, the water management of Huangshi generally improved, which indicates that the water pollution control in Huangshi had a positive effect. The results of this study can provide some reference for the green transformation development and ecological restoration of resource-based cities. Full article

Scientifically characterizing the spatial-temporal distribution characteristics of agricultural land use intensity and analyzing its driving factors are of great significance to the formulation of relevant agricultural land use intensity management policies, the realization of food safety and health, and the achievement of sustainable development goals. Taking Hubei Province as an example, and taking counties as the basic evaluation unit, this paper establishes an agricultural land use intensity evaluation system, explores the spatial autocorrelation of agricultural land use intensity in each county and analyzes the driving factors of agricultural land use intensity. The results show that the agricultural land use intensity in Hubei Province increased as a whole from 2000 to 2016, and the spatial agglomeration about the agricultural land use intensity in Hubei Province experienced a process of continuous growth and a fluctuating decline; the maximum of the Global Moran’s I was 0.430174 (in 2007) and the minimum was 0.148651 (in 2001). In terms of Local Moran’s I, H-H agglomeration units were mainly concentrated in two regions: One comprising the cities of Huanggang, Huangshi and Ezhou, and the other the cities of Xiangyang and Suizhou; the phenomenon is particularly obvious after 2005. On the other hand, factors such as the multiple cropping index (MCI) that reflect farmers’ willingness to engage in agricultural production have a great impact on agricultural land use intensity, the influence of the structure of the industry on agricultural land use intensity varies with the degree of influence of different industries on farmers’ income, and agricultural fiscal expenditure (AFE) has not effectively promoted the intensification of agricultural land use. The present research has important significance for enhancing insights into the sustainable improvement of agricultural land use intensity and for realizing risk control of agricultural land use and development. Full article

An in-depth discussion of place attachment in the relationship between residents’ perceived tourism impacts and their support for tourism is still lacking. The predictor of tourism involvement in this relationship has also been underestimated and little attention has been paid to industrial heritage tourism in relation to residents’ attitudes toward tourism development. To fill this gap, we extend upon the existing studies of residents’ attitudes toward tourism with place attachment (both place identity and place dependence) and tourism involvement based on social exchange theory, attitude theory, and the theory of planned behavior. A self-administered survey was completed by 336 residents of Huangshi, a city undergoing a transition to industrial heritage tourism in China. The findings show that residents’ support for tourism is the result of a complete behavior generation process. This has gradually formed through tourism involvement, cognition, affection, and behavior intention, emphasizing the importance of participation and affective attitude in determining residents’ attitudes toward tourism. To maintain the sustainable development of industrial heritage tourism in the economic transition from an old industrial region to new sectors, local authorities should attach more importance to strengthening residents’ native emotional bonds and concentrate on how to encourage local residents to participate in tourism activities. Full article