Densely populated coastal urban areas are often exposed to multiple hazards, in particular floods... more Densely populated coastal urban areas are often exposed to multiple hazards, in particular floods and storms. Flood defenses and other engineering measures contribute to the mitigation of flood hazards, but a holistic approach to flood risk management should consider other interventions from the human side, including warning information, adaptive behavior, people/property evacuation, and the multilateral relief in local communities. There are few simulation approaches to consider these factors, and these typically focus on collective human actions. This paper presents an agentbased model that simulates flood response preferences and actions taken within individual households to reduce flood losses. The model implements a human response framework in which agents assess different flood scenarios according to warning information and decide whether and how much they invest in response measures to reduce potential inundation damages. A case study has been carried out in the Ng Tung River...
The Grassland Ecological Protection Award Policy was implemented to address severe grassland degr... more The Grassland Ecological Protection Award Policy was implemented to address severe grassland degradation in China. This policy utilizes grassland subsidies as an incentive to control the number of livestock and has become the largest payment for ecosystem services program. Although many studies have analyzed the performance of this policy, it remains controversial as to whether grassland subsidies are effective at reducing the number of livestock; moreover, there is still a lack of quantitative studies on the roles of household livelihood assets and livelihood strategies in reducing the number of livestock. On the basis of the sustainable livelihood framework, this paper constructed an analytical framework to research how grassland subsidies affect the number of livestock under the effects of different livelihood capitals and local socioecological contexts. After choosing the Pumqu River Basin of the Tibetan Plateau as the research area, this study classified sample households on th...
This paper aims to explore the evolution of bioenergy from a comprehensive and dynamic perspectiv... more This paper aims to explore the evolution of bioenergy from a comprehensive and dynamic perspective and study how stakeholders in the industry exert influence during the development. Taking the development of bioenergy in the Yangtze River Delta as an example, the research builds a dynamic network of bioenergy stakeholders from a social network analysis method. This paper selects six typical cities and six stakeholder groups in the Yangtze River Delta to conduct field surveys and interviews. This study integrates social network analysis with multilevel perspective theory to analyse the evolution of bioenergy from a dynamic perspective. The results show that the relationship among the stakeholders is a network based on central stakeholders involved in the material flow and is affected by multiple peripheral stakeholders. Through the analysis of the dynamic evolution relationship between stakeholders, this paper reveals the existing problems during the development of bioenergy in the Y...
This study adopted an empirical analysis to explore social resilience to major natural disasters ... more This study adopted an empirical analysis to explore social resilience to major natural disasters along the Tea-Horse Road (THR) in southwest China and to understand why and how the THR and its connected communities maintained and developed over a long period. A set of archive data, literature re-analysis, statistical data, monitoring data, and surveyed materials were collected and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed to support a holistic investigation of disaster impacts and social resilience. The results indicate that (a) natural disasters occurred frequently but were distributed over place and time and had various impacts, which left possibilities for maintaining social development with diverse and specific coping strategies; (b) strong central and local governance continually improved infrastructure and engineering technologies, and collaboration in social networks with local experience and disaster cultures were the major contributing factors that enhanced social resilienc...
Spanning the Yangtze River of China, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has received considerable concern... more Spanning the Yangtze River of China, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has received considerable concern worldwide with its potential impacts on the downstream side of the dam. This work investigated the spatio-temporal variations of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) at the downstream section of Yichang-to-Chenglingji from 2002 to 2015. A random forest model was developed to estimate SSC using MODIS ground reflectance products, and the spatio-temporal distributions of SSC were retrieved with this model to investigate the characteristics of water-silt variation. Our results revealed that, relatively, SSC before 2003 was evenly distributed in the downstream Yangtze River, while this spatial distribution pattern changed ce 2003 when the dam started storing water. Temporally, the SSC demonstrated a W-shaped curve of seasonal variation as one peak occurred in September and two troughs in March and November, and showed a significantly decreasing trend after three-stage impoundment. After of...
Understanding the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change is important for the guidanc... more Understanding the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change is important for the guidance of rational land-use management. Based on land-use data, household surveys and social economic data in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, this study adopted the Binary Logistic Regression Model (BLRM) to analyze the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change in a large artificial forest area in the Ximeng County, Yunnan province, in Southwest China. Seventeen factors were used to reflect the socio-economic and natural environment conditions in the study area. The results show a land use pattern composed of forestland, dry cropland, and rubber plantation in Ximeng County. Over the past fifteen years, the area of artificial forests increased rapidly due to the “Grain for Green” policy, which has led to increases in rubber plantations, tea gardens, eucalyptus forests, etc. In contrast, the area of natural forest and dry cropland decreased due to reclamations for farming and constructions...
The importance of predicting the exposure to environmental hazards is highlighted by issues like ... more The importance of predicting the exposure to environmental hazards is highlighted by issues like global climate change, public health problems caused by environment stresses, and property damages and depreciations. Several approaches have been used to assess potential exposure and achieve optimal results under various conditions, for example, for different scales, groups of people, or certain points in time. Micro-simulation tools are becoming increasingly important in human exposure assessment, where each person is simulated individually and continuously. This paper describes an agent-based model (ABM) framework that can dynamically simulate human exposure levels, along with their daily activities, in urban areas that are characterized by environmental stresses such as air pollution and heat stress. Within the framework, decision making processes can be included for each individual based on rule-based behavior to achieve goals under changing environmental conditions. The ideas desc...
Past abrupt climate changes on millennium time scales have received wide attention among natural ... more Past abrupt climate changes on millennium time scales have received wide attention among natural and social scientists, also because of today’s rapid climate changes and their extensive impacts on our society. In the eastern Mediterranean area, coherent patterns and synchronous events in history suggest obvious links between urban development and climate forcing. The city of Athens as the origin of ancient Greek civilization experienced many periods of prosperity and decay. Though the transitions were mostly dominated by wars and power changes between empires, severe climate events and natural disasters may also considerably have shaped the process of Athens’ development. Among natural disasters, earthquake, tsunami, flood and wildfire were the main forces that stressed the development of Athens. To recover from and respond to these disaster impacts, the city was thereafter developed in ways that either changed the ever existed city patterns or guided sensitive areas to specific dir...
ABSTRACT This study takes the perspective of emerging economies as an independent group to answer... more ABSTRACT This study takes the perspective of emerging economies as an independent group to answer the question of how to reconcile food supply and bioenergy feedstock provision, a critical topic in bioenergy research. While much of the literature has covered this issue, the role of emerging economies has rarely been explored. Due to their transitional status in the world economy, solutions from this group can facilitate the diffusion of modern bioenergy from industrialized countries to least developed ones. This paper uses Jiangsu Province in China as a case study to analyze its local practice on the reconciliation between food and bioenergy. Local experience reveals that the key is the use of cellulosic biomass, whose sources are straws of food crops on arable lands and energy crops on reclaimed mudflats. To ensure a sustainable provision of cellulosic biomass, it is necessary to involve the entire bioenergy supply chain consisting of smallholder farmers, haulers and bioenergy plant operators. For the management of the supply chain, we compare two options, “Multiple to Multiple” and “Multiple to One”, where the second option is more adequate to shape a long-term stable relationship between biomass suppliers and consumers and thus facilitate the introduction of energy crops.
Densely populated coastal urban areas are often exposed to multiple hazards, in particular floods... more Densely populated coastal urban areas are often exposed to multiple hazards, in particular floods and storms. Flood defenses and other engineering measures contribute to the mitigation of flood hazards, but a holistic approach to flood risk management should consider other interventions from the human side, including warning information, adaptive behavior, people/property evacuation, and the multilateral relief in local communities. There are few simulation approaches to consider these factors, and these typically focus on collective human actions. This paper presents an agentbased model that simulates flood response preferences and actions taken within individual households to reduce flood losses. The model implements a human response framework in which agents assess different flood scenarios according to warning information and decide whether and how much they invest in response measures to reduce potential inundation damages. A case study has been carried out in the Ng Tung River...
The Grassland Ecological Protection Award Policy was implemented to address severe grassland degr... more The Grassland Ecological Protection Award Policy was implemented to address severe grassland degradation in China. This policy utilizes grassland subsidies as an incentive to control the number of livestock and has become the largest payment for ecosystem services program. Although many studies have analyzed the performance of this policy, it remains controversial as to whether grassland subsidies are effective at reducing the number of livestock; moreover, there is still a lack of quantitative studies on the roles of household livelihood assets and livelihood strategies in reducing the number of livestock. On the basis of the sustainable livelihood framework, this paper constructed an analytical framework to research how grassland subsidies affect the number of livestock under the effects of different livelihood capitals and local socioecological contexts. After choosing the Pumqu River Basin of the Tibetan Plateau as the research area, this study classified sample households on th...
This paper aims to explore the evolution of bioenergy from a comprehensive and dynamic perspectiv... more This paper aims to explore the evolution of bioenergy from a comprehensive and dynamic perspective and study how stakeholders in the industry exert influence during the development. Taking the development of bioenergy in the Yangtze River Delta as an example, the research builds a dynamic network of bioenergy stakeholders from a social network analysis method. This paper selects six typical cities and six stakeholder groups in the Yangtze River Delta to conduct field surveys and interviews. This study integrates social network analysis with multilevel perspective theory to analyse the evolution of bioenergy from a dynamic perspective. The results show that the relationship among the stakeholders is a network based on central stakeholders involved in the material flow and is affected by multiple peripheral stakeholders. Through the analysis of the dynamic evolution relationship between stakeholders, this paper reveals the existing problems during the development of bioenergy in the Y...
This study adopted an empirical analysis to explore social resilience to major natural disasters ... more This study adopted an empirical analysis to explore social resilience to major natural disasters along the Tea-Horse Road (THR) in southwest China and to understand why and how the THR and its connected communities maintained and developed over a long period. A set of archive data, literature re-analysis, statistical data, monitoring data, and surveyed materials were collected and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed to support a holistic investigation of disaster impacts and social resilience. The results indicate that (a) natural disasters occurred frequently but were distributed over place and time and had various impacts, which left possibilities for maintaining social development with diverse and specific coping strategies; (b) strong central and local governance continually improved infrastructure and engineering technologies, and collaboration in social networks with local experience and disaster cultures were the major contributing factors that enhanced social resilienc...
Spanning the Yangtze River of China, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has received considerable concern... more Spanning the Yangtze River of China, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has received considerable concern worldwide with its potential impacts on the downstream side of the dam. This work investigated the spatio-temporal variations of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) at the downstream section of Yichang-to-Chenglingji from 2002 to 2015. A random forest model was developed to estimate SSC using MODIS ground reflectance products, and the spatio-temporal distributions of SSC were retrieved with this model to investigate the characteristics of water-silt variation. Our results revealed that, relatively, SSC before 2003 was evenly distributed in the downstream Yangtze River, while this spatial distribution pattern changed ce 2003 when the dam started storing water. Temporally, the SSC demonstrated a W-shaped curve of seasonal variation as one peak occurred in September and two troughs in March and November, and showed a significantly decreasing trend after three-stage impoundment. After of...
Understanding the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change is important for the guidanc... more Understanding the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change is important for the guidance of rational land-use management. Based on land-use data, household surveys and social economic data in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, this study adopted the Binary Logistic Regression Model (BLRM) to analyze the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change in a large artificial forest area in the Ximeng County, Yunnan province, in Southwest China. Seventeen factors were used to reflect the socio-economic and natural environment conditions in the study area. The results show a land use pattern composed of forestland, dry cropland, and rubber plantation in Ximeng County. Over the past fifteen years, the area of artificial forests increased rapidly due to the “Grain for Green” policy, which has led to increases in rubber plantations, tea gardens, eucalyptus forests, etc. In contrast, the area of natural forest and dry cropland decreased due to reclamations for farming and constructions...
The importance of predicting the exposure to environmental hazards is highlighted by issues like ... more The importance of predicting the exposure to environmental hazards is highlighted by issues like global climate change, public health problems caused by environment stresses, and property damages and depreciations. Several approaches have been used to assess potential exposure and achieve optimal results under various conditions, for example, for different scales, groups of people, or certain points in time. Micro-simulation tools are becoming increasingly important in human exposure assessment, where each person is simulated individually and continuously. This paper describes an agent-based model (ABM) framework that can dynamically simulate human exposure levels, along with their daily activities, in urban areas that are characterized by environmental stresses such as air pollution and heat stress. Within the framework, decision making processes can be included for each individual based on rule-based behavior to achieve goals under changing environmental conditions. The ideas desc...
Past abrupt climate changes on millennium time scales have received wide attention among natural ... more Past abrupt climate changes on millennium time scales have received wide attention among natural and social scientists, also because of today’s rapid climate changes and their extensive impacts on our society. In the eastern Mediterranean area, coherent patterns and synchronous events in history suggest obvious links between urban development and climate forcing. The city of Athens as the origin of ancient Greek civilization experienced many periods of prosperity and decay. Though the transitions were mostly dominated by wars and power changes between empires, severe climate events and natural disasters may also considerably have shaped the process of Athens’ development. Among natural disasters, earthquake, tsunami, flood and wildfire were the main forces that stressed the development of Athens. To recover from and respond to these disaster impacts, the city was thereafter developed in ways that either changed the ever existed city patterns or guided sensitive areas to specific dir...
ABSTRACT This study takes the perspective of emerging economies as an independent group to answer... more ABSTRACT This study takes the perspective of emerging economies as an independent group to answer the question of how to reconcile food supply and bioenergy feedstock provision, a critical topic in bioenergy research. While much of the literature has covered this issue, the role of emerging economies has rarely been explored. Due to their transitional status in the world economy, solutions from this group can facilitate the diffusion of modern bioenergy from industrialized countries to least developed ones. This paper uses Jiangsu Province in China as a case study to analyze its local practice on the reconciliation between food and bioenergy. Local experience reveals that the key is the use of cellulosic biomass, whose sources are straws of food crops on arable lands and energy crops on reclaimed mudflats. To ensure a sustainable provision of cellulosic biomass, it is necessary to involve the entire bioenergy supply chain consisting of smallholder farmers, haulers and bioenergy plant operators. For the management of the supply chain, we compare two options, “Multiple to Multiple” and “Multiple to One”, where the second option is more adequate to shape a long-term stable relationship between biomass suppliers and consumers and thus facilitate the introduction of energy crops.
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