Journal of Arid Land selected for coverage in Cambridge Science Abstracts and Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience Abstracts

In November 2011, Journal of Arid Land （JAL） was accepted for indexing in Cambridge Science Abstracts （CSA） and Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience Abstracts （CAB Abstracts） after strict assessments by these two databases.

Forestvoltaics,Floatovoltaics and Building Applied Photovoltaics(BAPV)Potential for a University Campus

The United Nations’Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)highlight the importance of affordable and clean energy sources.Solar energy is a perfect example,being both renewable and abundant.Its popularity shows no signs of slowing down,with solar photovoltaic(PV)panels being the primary technology for converting sunlight into electricity.Advancements are continuously being made to ensure cost-effectiveness,high-performing cells,extended lifespans,and minimal maintenance requirements.This study focuses on identifying suitable locations for implementing solar PVsystems at theUniversityMalaysia PahangAl SultanAbdullah(UMPSA),Pekan campus including buildings,water bodies,and forest areas.A combined technical and economic analysis is conducted using Helioscope for simulations and the Photovoltaic Geographic Information System(PVGIS)for economic considerations.Helioscope simulation examine case studies for PV installations in forested areas,lakes,and buildings.This approach provides comprehensive estimations of solar photovoltaic potential,annual cost savings,electricity costs,and greenhouse gas emission reductions.Based on land coverage percentages,Floatovoltaics have a large solar PV capacity of 32.3 Megawatts(MW);forest-based photovoltaics(Forestvoltaics)achieve maximum yearly savings of RM 37,268,550;and Building Applied Photovoltaics(BAPV)have the lowest CO2 emissions and net carbon dioxide reduction compared to other plant sizes.It also clarifies the purpose of using both software tools to achieve a comprehensive understanding of both technical and economic aspects.

Dynamic Changes of Land Use in Built-up Area of Chengde City in the Past 14 Years

Landsat TM/OLI images of the built-up areas in Chengde City(Shuangqiao District and Shuangluan District) in 2000,2009 and 2014 were adopted,Support Vector Machine(SVM) was applied to classify the images automatically,land use/cover map of the study area was obtained after precision test.Through analyzing the land use types in the study area and also applying transfer matrix to monitor the changes,the results showed that human activities and urbanization in the past 14 years have brought the increasing tendency of construction land,and the negative growth of arable land,forest and shrubbery land.It is urgent to adopt corresponding measures to maintain the coverage of forest and shrubbery land in the built-up area of Chengde City,so as to reduce the impact of human activities and improve urban ecological environment.

Rethinking Iranian Urban Housing -- A Review on the Housing Attributes under the Current Development of Tehran

Housing in the private sector in the metropolitan of Tehran in the past decades has been very much tied to the economical considerations, The current urban and building standards and regulations are believed to have very much contributed to the undermining the many social, environmental and visual potentials of the neighborhoods and to what we face today as congested apartment atmosphere where and the monotonous character of most of the neighborhoods as a result of the very same plans and regulations applied to their development namely the setbacks, land coverage ratios and floor to land area ratios with no regard to the very different characters many of these neighborhoods once had, either traditional and long-established or scenic and natural. The purpose of this paper is to briefly review the current state and trend of urban housing in Tehran and search for practical measures to improve the environment and character of urban housing in the city.

Spatiotemporal Patterns and Drivers of Forest Change from 1985–2000 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China

Forests are fundamental to maintaining ecological security and achieving regional sustainable development in China. Forest land change can result in many ecological problems including soil erosion, water shortages drought and biodiversity loss. Based on landscape ecology and logistic regression we explored the spatiotemporal patterns and factors affecting forest land changes from 1985 to 2000 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China. The results show decreased local fragmentation of woodland landscapes and that the shapes of forest patches have become more regular. For forest land cover change, soil organic matter content, slope type I （〈5°）, distance to the nearest village and per capita GDP were the most important independent variables from 1985 to 2000. This study indicates that spatial heterogeneity can affect the predictability of logistic regression models for forest land change.