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Coupled Human and Natural Systems Driven by Innovation in Geospatial...
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Coupled Human and Natural Systems Driven by Innovation in Geospatial Technologies

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 2360

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Wenwu Tang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA
Interests: geographic information science; spatial cyberinfrastructure; agent-based modeling; land use and land cover change; complex adaptive spatial systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Shen-En Chen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA
Interests: remote sensing for bridge monitoring; forensic investigation; power transmission structures; carbon storage in geological formations
Prof. Dr. Akinwumi Ogundiran

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Africana Studies, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA
Interests: archaeology; social-ecological systems; social complexity; urban landscape
Dr. Peng Wang

E-Mail
Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory for Geomechnics and Deep Underground Engineering, Xuzhou 221116, China
Interests: carbon sequestration; infrastructure; greenhouse gas diffusion.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Our coupled human and natural systems have been experiencing significant change driven by such events as climate, deforestation, disasters, and pandemics. Coupled human and natural systems here broadly consist of multiple spatial systems in different dimensions such as environmental, ecological, social, political, urban, and rural dimensions. Complex dynamics of coupled human and natural systems are affected by a multitude of factors from across multiple spatial, temporal, and decision scales. Over the years, geospatial technologies such as geospatial sensing, GIS, and GPS provide substantial support for the collection, analysis, and visualization of geospatial data with considerable computing support from cyberinfrastructure. Recent innovations in geospatial technologies—represented by LiDAR, unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs, also known as drones), etc.—have played an increasingly important role in the study of complexity in coupled human and natural systems. This is particularly the case with advancements in cyberinfrastructure-enabled computing technologies (high-performance computing, cloud computing, web-based and mobile computing), artificial intelligence, and virtual reality or augmented reality. As a result, these geospatial technologies have been extensively applied to a variety of scientific and engineering domains with common interest in the study of coupled human and natural systems. These domains include, but are not limited to, agriculture, archaeology, business, ecology, environment, energy, geology, geography, hydrology, infrastructure, meteorology, public health, transportation, and urban or urban–rural studies. This Special Issue concentrates on identifying the state of the applications of innovative geospatial technologies and advanced cyberinfrastructure in the study of coupled human and natural systems and, thus, providing suggestions for and insights into the next step for the exploration of spatial complexity and sustainability of these spatial systems.

Dr. Wenwu Tang
Prof. Dr. Shen-En Chen
Prof. Dr. Akinwumi Ogundiran
Dr. Peng Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • social–environmental sustainability
  • coupled human and natural systems
  • geospatial technology
  • advanced cyberinfrastructure

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 7533 KiB  
Article
GIS-Based Scientific Workflows for Automated Spatially Driven Sea Level Rise Modeling
by Wenwu Tang, Heidi S. Hearne, Zachery Slocum and Tianyang Chen
Sustainability 2023, 15(17), 12704; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su151712704 - 22 Aug 2023
Viewed by 744
Abstract
Sea level rise (SLR) poses a significant threat to shorelines and the environment in terms of flooding densely populated areas and associated coastal ecosystems. Scenario analysis is often used to investigate potential SLR consequences, which can help stakeholders make informed decisions on climate [...] Read more.
Sea level rise (SLR) poses a significant threat to shorelines and the environment in terms of flooding densely populated areas and associated coastal ecosystems. Scenario analysis is often used to investigate potential SLR consequences, which can help stakeholders make informed decisions on climate change mitigation policies or guidelines. However, SLR scenario analysis requires considerable geospatial data analytics and repetitive execution of SLR models for alternative scenarios. Having to run SLR models many times for scenario analysis studies leads to heavy computational needs as well as a large investment of time and effort. This study explores the benefits of incorporating cyberinfrastructure technologies, represented by scientific workflows and high-performance computing, into spatially explicit SLR modeling. We propose a scientific workflow-driven approach to modeling the potential loss of marshland in response to different SLR scenarios. Our study area is the central South Carolina coastal region, USA. The scientific workflow approach allows for automating the geospatial data processing for SLR modeling, while repetitive modeling and data analytics are accelerated by leveraging high-performance and parallel computing. With support from automation and acceleration, this scientific workflow-driven approach allows us to conduct computationally intensive scenario analysis experiments to evaluate the impact of SLR on alternative land cover types including marshes and tidal flats as well as their spatial characteristics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coupled Human and Natural Systems Driven by Innovation in Geospatial Technologies)
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21 pages, 45379 KiB  
Article
Spatio-Temporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of the Resilience of Tourism Environmental Systems in the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China
by Kun Wang, Songxin Zhao, Xiangtai Chen, Zhenxian Lei and Xiao Zhou
Sustainability 2023, 15(13), 10527; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su151310527 - 04 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 787
Abstract
The resilience of a tourism environmental system (TESR) is an important aspect of sustainable tourism growth. Based on the construction of an evaluation system for the TESR, this study used 126 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as a case [...] Read more.
The resilience of a tourism environmental system (TESR) is an important aspect of sustainable tourism growth. Based on the construction of an evaluation system for the TESR, this study used 126 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as a case study and attempted to explore the spatio-temporal evolution features and influencing mechanism of the TESR. The primary conclusions are as follows: (1) Despite significant improvement in TESR in the YREB, the overall resilience level and growth rate remain relatively low, with ample potential for improvement. (2) Positive spatial correlation and type agglomeration impact are evident in the urban TESR. (3) Relatively frequent transitions of the TESR occur with spatial dependence and spillover effects in the transition paths, i.e., high-level cities can improve the TESR of neighboring cities through positive spillover effects. (4) Several factors, such as city economic, social, industrial, and policy factors, jointly impact the evolution of the pattern of the TESR in the YREB, with heterogeneous effects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coupled Human and Natural Systems Driven by Innovation in Geospatial Technologies)
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