Land Cover and Ecological Change

Rapid urbanization has intensified the urban heat island (UHI) effect in Southeast Asian megacities, necessitating effective nature-based solutions. This study evaluates the cooling capacity of diverse green spaces in Khung Bang Kachao (KBK), Thailand, by integrating Google Earth Engine (GEE), field vegetation inventories, and temperature monitoring across 20 plots representing three types: rehabilitation forest, agroforestry, and urban areas. Results demonstrate that mean LST varied significantly across green space types: rehabilitation forests achieved the lowest mean LST (33.86 °C), followed by agroforestry (35.19 °C) and urban areas (40.77 °C). Structural parameters (tree density, crown cover, height, species composition, and NDVI) correlated negatively with LST, with NDVI exhibiting the strongest correlation (r = −0.74). Multivariable modeling revealed NDVI as the sole significant predictor of LST reduction at 10 m and 30 m resolutions, highlighting NDVI as a stronger driver of LST reduction than other structural parameters. In temporal analysis (2020–2024), rehabilitation forest cover contracted sharply from 31.94% to 12.02% due to agricultural conversion, corresponding to lower NDVI and higher LST, potentially exacerbating the localized UHI effect. Furthermore, a weak correlation between LST and air temperature underscores the influence of built environment heat factors. The final model included only Month and Light Intensity. While NDVI indicates LST, satellite-derived LST alone cannot reflect air temperature, requiring both environmental and physical factors in urban heat management. Full article

Lenggong Valley is an important heritage landscape in Malaysia commonly recognized for its outstanding archaeological, cultural, and environmental significance. However, increasing land use pressure around heritage areas may affect landscape authenticity, environmental quality, and long-term conservation planning. This study aims to analyze historical land use change and predict future land use patterns within the Lenggong catchment, a sub-catchment of the Sungai Perak catchment. Land use data for 2000, 2010, and 2020 were obtained from PlanMalaysia and reclassified into five major classes: water bodies, agriculture, forest, built-up areas, and vacant land. The ANN model was calibrated using the 2000 and 2010 land use maps, while the simulated 2020 map was validated against the observed 2020 map using Kappa statistics. Following validation, the 2010–2020 transition pattern and cellular-automata neighborhood effects were used to predict land use for 2040 through two consecutive 10-year simulation iterations. The results showed that forest and agriculture remained the dominant land use classes in the catchment. However, forest decreased from 58.9% in 2000 to 54.4% in 2020, while agriculture increased from 33.3% to 35.5%. Built-up areas also increased from 1.8% to 3.5% and were predicted to reach 3.8%. The model also denoted acceptable performance, with an overall Kappa value of 0.71 and validation accuracy of 83.1%. Within the 1 km heritage buffer, built-up areas increased from 3.6% in 2000 to 10.5% in 2020, with a projected increase to 13.2%. Overall, the findings highlight increasing development pressure around the Lenggong heritage landscape and provide useful spatial evidence for heritage-sensitive planning and long-term conservation management. Full article

Rapid urbanization has significantly altered land use patterns in Deqing County, placing increasing pressure on its ecosystem. This study establishes a Driving Force–Pressure–State–Impact (DPSI) framework and selects ten indicators to evaluate ecological sensitivity for 2014, 2019, and 2024. It then couples this framework with the PLUS model to simulate land use and ecological sensitivity changes under the following three 2034 scenarios: natural development (ND), ecological protection (EP), and urban development (UD). Results show that ecological sensitivity exhibits a “high west, low east” spatial pattern and it fluctuated with an initial decline followed by a rise from 2014 to 2024, though the overall trend was a slow decrease. Land use type (weight 0.342), distance to rivers (weight 0.191), and distance to roads (weight 0.146) were the dominant influencing factors, together depicting Deqing’s ecological landscape of “western forests, eastern farmlands, and dense water networks”. The PLUS model demonstrated good validation accuracy (Kappa = 0.81), and the contributions of driving factors shifted over time. Multi-scenario simulation indicates that the ecological protection (EP) scenario is more suitable for sustainable urban development. We recommend implementing differentiated ecological control zones, integrating sensitivity evaluation into planning decisions, and improving the differentiated ecological compensation mechanism. Full article

Mangroves are highly productive ecosystems due to their great capacity to store carbon, but they are also vulnerable to human activities and adverse environmental conditions. Their conservation is often constrained by the opportunity costs of shifting from traditional economic activities to blue carbon projects. This work analyzes the prices of the different carbon markets in ecosystems, compares them with the benefits obtained from other productive activities, and evaluates the viability of implementing carbon projects in mangroves. An exhaustive literature search is conducted to assess the carbon prices of ecosystems worldwide. The opportunity costs of mangrove carbon capture projects in Mexico are estimated from site-specific and regionally relevant economic data; additionally, broader national benchmarks are presented for contextual comparison but are not interpreted as direct opportunity costs where they do not represent realistic land-use alternatives for the mangrove sites analyzed. The price of carbon ranges from 4 to 86 USD per Mg CO₂e. The most studied natural ecosystems are forests. The highest gross annual profit (GAP) from carbon sales is observed in Tabasco and Campeche. GAP with mangrove wood harvesting ranges from 628.0 USD ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ to 3917.7 USD ha⁻¹ year⁻¹. The highest GAP for crops is obtained for white corn in the state of Hidalgo. GAP of the economic activity of livestock ranges from 3167.59 USD ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ to 3365.71 USD ha⁻¹ year⁻¹. The blue carbon projects are competitive with other productive activities at relatively high prices (86 USD per Mg CO₂e). In Tabasco, under certain high-price and high-sequestration scenarios, blue carbon projects can be competitive with local agricultural activities; however, this competitiveness is highly conditional on carbon price, sequestration rates, and local opportunity costs, and therefore cannot be generalized to all mangrove owners without site-specific appraisal. Fair carbon prices are required to make mangrove conservation projects attractive to producers. Full article

Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia is a typical arid and semi-arid grassland region where ecological environmental quality is highly sensitive to climate variability and land use and land cover change (LULCC). Clarifying the long-term coupling relationship between LULCC and ecological environmental quality is essential for regional ecological protection and sustainable land management. Based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, this study integrated multi-temporal Landsat imagery and CLCD-based land use datasets, including an updated 2024 land use layer, to construct a Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) using standardized and direction-corrected principal component analysis. land use transition matrix analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, ecological contribution rate calculation, and GeoDetector were further applied to reveal the spatiotemporal evolution patterns, ecological effects, and driving mechanisms of LULCC in Siziwang Banner from 2000 to 2024. The results showed that: (1) grassland was consistently the dominant land use type, accounting for more than 90% of the total area. The overall land use pattern was characterized by stable grassland dominance, decreasing farmland and unused land, and slight increases in grassland and construction land; forestland showed a high relative growth rate but remained very small in absolute area. (2) The regional ecological environmental quality remained at a lower-to-medium level, with mean RSEI values ranging from 0.27 to 0.47. RSEI showed a phased pattern of initial improvement, subsequent decline, and partial recovery; the marked decline around 2015 was associated with the combined effects of drought stress and land use degradation rather than a single driving factor. RSEI exhibited significant positive spatial autocorrelation, with Moran’s I values ranging from 0.898 to 0.993. High-value clusters were mainly distributed in the southern region, whereas low-value clusters were concentrated in the central and northern regions. (3) Different land use transitions produced differentiated ecological effects. The conversion of unused land to grassland contributed positively to ecological restoration, while grassland degradation and construction land expansion exerted negative effects. The positive RSEI response of some grassland-to-farmland transitions should be interpreted cautiously in relation to local irrigation and intensive farmland management. (4) GeoDetector results indicated that land use type and DEM were the dominant factors controlling the spatial differentiation of RSEI, with average q values of 0.7188 and 0.6178, respectively. The interaction between DEM and land use type showed the strongest explanatory power, indicating that ecological quality was jointly shaped by land use structure and natural background conditions. This study provides a scientific basis for grassland protection, unused-land restoration, farmland management, and spatially differentiated ecological restoration in Siziwang Banner and similar ecologically fragile arid and semi-arid grassland regions. Full article