Land use and land cover (LULC) change is a critical driver of socio-ecological transformation in rapidly urbanising regions. This study analyses multi-decadal LULC dynamics in King Sabata Dalindyebo (KSD) Local Municipality, South Africa, using Landsat imagery from 1994, 2004, 2014, and 2022. Supervised classification and accuracy assessment reveal significant expansion of built-up areas alongside declines in cropland and grassland. Overall accuracies exceeded 85%, with confusion matrices provided for transparency. The findings demonstrate that urban growth, informal settlement expansion, and land reform policies have reshaped the landscape, while ecological consequences include biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and reduced ecosystem services. By situating KSD within global comparative contexts, including South Asia and other low- and middle-income countries, the study highlights shared challenges of balancing urbanisation, agricultural decline, and ecological resilience. The novelty of this work lies in its integration of socio-economic drivers and ecological implications into a long-term LULC analysis, moving beyond descriptive mapping to provide actionable insights. Policy recommendations include strengthening land-use planning and zoning, supporting climate-smart agriculture, conserving grasslands, and institutionalising routine LULC monitoring within municipal governance. The study underscores the importance of combining remote sensing with socio-economic analysis to inform evidence-based land management in South Africa and comparable contexts.
Ritual waste is often subsumed within generic municipal waste categories despite distinctive material, cultural, and governance characteristics. This critical scoping review examines ritual waste as a potentially misclassified urban waste stream and how its management is shaped by material composition, social meaning, behavioural practices, and institutional arrangements. Following PRISMA-ScR and JBI guidance, searches in Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar/Publish or Perish, supplemented by citation chasing, identified 23 eligible studies. Ritual waste comprised heterogeneous biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials, while handling was influenced by sacredness, social norms, authority, convenience, facility access, and legitimacy. Reported pathways ranged from open dumping, burning, and disposal into water bodiesto segregation, composting, refuse-derived fuel , briquetting, incense production, black soldier fly processing, and bioporesystems. Governance gaps emerged where conventional waste systems failed to accommodate ritual timing, material diversity, and culturally specific handling requirements. Evidence remained geographically concentrated and methodologically heterogeneous. Ritual waste therefore becomes an environmental management challenge through misclassification, as socially significant materials are managed as ordinary waste within systems that insufficiently address symbolic and operational dimensions. Effective management requires culturally legitimate, institutionally adaptive, and coordinated approaches integrating community authority, service design, treatment options, and urban environmental policy.
Rapid urbanization is transforming cities into socio-ecological systems where wildlife adapts to human-dominated environments. This study introduces the Urban Primate Paradox, a conceptual framework explaining how urban expansion fragments natural habitats while creating anthropogenic resource opportunities that attract adaptable primates and intensify human–Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) conflict. Using Shimla, India, as a representative Himalayan urban ecosystem, the study integrates remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), landscape ecology, spatial statistics, predictive modelling, field observations, behavioural surveys, household questionnaires, and stakeholder interviews to examine the spatial, ecological, behavioural, and socio-economic determinants of conflict. Land use and land cover analysis from 1993–2023 reveals substantial urban expansion, forest fragmentation, and increased anthropogenic resource availability. Spatial analyses identify conflict concentrations and their associations with urban density, tourism, waste accumulation, accessibility, habitat fragmentation, and forest–urban interfaces. Findings indicate that conflict is driven primarily by landscape transformation and anthropogenic resource availability rather than macaque abundance alone. The study proposes a geospatial decision-support framework integrating habitat connectivity restoration, wildlife-resistant waste management, GIS-enabled conflict monitoring, predictive risk assessment, and participatory governance. The framework offers a transferable approach for biodiversity-inclusive, resilient, and coexistence-oriented planning in rapidly urbanizing mountain cities.
Dry Afromontane forests are important carbon sinks, yet the influence of topographic gradients on their carbon stocks remains insufficiently understood. This study assessed aboveground carbon (AGC), belowground carbon (BGC), litter carbon (LC), soil organic carbon (SOC), and total carbon (TC) stocks along altitude, slope, and aspect gradients in Bela Mountain Forest, northern Ethiopia. Data were collected from 108 georeferenced plots (20 × 20 m), with nested litter and soil subplots (1 × 1 m). Descriptive statistics, assumption tests, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Tukey’s HSD, Kruskal–Wallis tests, and multivariable models were used. Mean total carbon stock was 108.81 t ha⁻1, with SOC accounting for 75.3% and AGC for 19.8%. Altitude significantly influenced AGC (p = 0.0037), BGC (p = 0.0036), LC (p = 0.0107), and TC (p = 0.0306), whereas slope and aspect showed no consistent effects. Multivariable models identified altitude as a significant negative predictor of all carbon pools, while slope effects were weak or nonsignificant. These findings identify altitude as an important determinant of carbon-stock variation in Bela Mountain Forest and highlight the value of incorporating topographic gradients into the management and conservation of dry Afromontane forests.
This study aimed to delineate groundwater potential zones and reduce exploration uncertainty by integrating remote sensing, GIS-based multi-criteria analysis, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), 2D electrical resistivity imaging (ERI), sensitivity analysis, and pumping-well validation. Eight groundwater-controlling factors – lithology, rainfall, geomorphology, lineament density, land use/land cover, soil, slope, and drainage density – were derived from satellite imagery, DEM, geological, rainfall, and field datasets and combined using a GIS weighted-overlay model. AHP results showed that lithology (0.31), rainfall (0.21), geomorphology (0.16), and lineament density (0.13) were the dominant controls on groundwater occurrence, while land use/land cover (0.08), soil (0.05), slope (0.04), and drainage density (0.02) had secondary influence. The groundwater potential map classified 1441.74 km2 (61.47%) of the catchment as good potential, 870.18 km2 (37.09%) as moderate potential, and 33.63 km2 (1.43%) as low potential. Four Wenner-array ERI profiles imaged subsurface conditions to approximately 74 m depth with RMS misfits of 1.86–5.3%, identifying saturated sand/sand–silt deposits and highly weathered rock as the main favorable water-bearing units, whereas clay-rich shallow layers and slightly weathered rock were less favorable. Sensitivity analysis confirmed that lithology and rainfall exert the strongest control on the mapped low-potential zones, with the low-potential area increasing to 15.61% and 21.06%, respectively, when each factor was removed. Validation using 116 pumping wells showed strong agreement between predicted groundwater potential and well transmissivity, with 91 wells located in good-potential zones, 23 in moderate zones, and 2 in low zones, corresponding to 98.28% class agreement.
