To explore contaminant concerns as a result of anthropogenic disturbance of the river system, this study provided the first extensive investigation of the contamination profiles, possible driving factors, and ecological risks of 40 target compounds including pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), neonicotinoid pesticides (NNIs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in sediments of the whole Yangtze River (the world's third longest river). Among these target compounds, PPCPs were the dominant contaminants with a total concentration (& sum;(15)PPCPs) of 2.13-14.99 ng/g, followed by & sum;(7)PCBs (<LOD-1.97 ng/g), & sum;(11)NNIs (<LOD-1.18 ng/g), and & sum;7PBDEs (<LOD-0.78 ng/g). The results suggested that contamination levels of these chemicals were largely due to the amount used, low affinity with sediments, and effective management practices. Microplastics and anthropogenic factors (i.e., GDP per capita, population density, and urbanization rate) contributed significantly to PPCPs contamination based on correlation analysis (p < 0.05). The risk assessment suggested that PBDE 99, PBDE 183, E3, PCB 153, and PCB 118 posed relatively high risks when compared with other compounds. Therefore, it is not only necessary to take effective measures to reduce the contamination of legacy POPs, but also to improve the management and treatment of emerging organic chemicals to deal with the threat of them in the Yangtze River Basin.

A digital twin is a digital representation of real-world physical product, system, or process. Digital twins potentially offer a much richer capability to model and analyze real-world systems and improve environment sustainability.In this work, an integrated 3D GIS and VR model for scenarios modeling and interactive data visualisation has been developed and implemented through the Digital Twin technology at the Glensaugh research farm. Spatial Multi-criteria Analysis has been applied to decide where to plant new woodlands, recognizing a range of land-use objectives while acknowledging concerns about possible conflicts with other uses of the land. The virtual contents (e.g., forest spatial datasets, monitored climate data, analyzed carbon stocks and natural capital asset index) have been embedded in the virtual landscape model which help raise public awareness of changes in rural areas.The Digital twin prototype for Glensaugh Climate-Positive Farming was used at the STFC workshop 2021, GISRUK 2022, 2022 Royal Highland Show which provides an innovative framework to integrate spatial data modelling, analytical capabilities and immersive visualization.Audience feedback suggested that the virtual environment was very effective in providing a more realistic impression of the different land-use and woodland expansion scenarios and environmental characteristics. This suggests considerable added value from using digital twin technology to better deal with complexity of data analysis, scenarios simulation and enable rapid interpretation of solutions.Findings show this method has a potential impact on future woodland planning and enables rapid interpretation of forest and climate data which increases the effectiveness of their use and contribution to wider sustainable environment.

Riparian zones of rivers are transitional environments between land and water ecosystems with distinct hydrological gradients, soils and habitats strongly related to their functioning. When these functions are intact, they integrate multi-directional processes across the land-river channel (e.g. canopy shade effects on the stream, flood inundation effects on the land) with mutual beneficial effects. In many managed landscapes these functions have been degraded. To restore them, considerable efforts have been directed over the last 20 years to understand and place effective riparian 'buffer' zones, particularly to enhance water quality and biodiversity. Since water quality targets are not easily met by current practices in many managed landscapes (as additive pressures increase), catchment managers will have to increasingly restore riparian functions to enhance aquatic ecosystem resilience to land and climate change. Targeting effective restoration within site-specific contexts requires availability of spatial data, in combinations that inform on individual and multiple functions. There are accelerating developments with spatial data, arising from increased spatial resolution of key underlying datasets, availability of soil and landcover data and increasing secondary derived attributes. Hence, a review is timely into the best practices in the use of these data for delineating riparian functions and management zones for rivers. Our review evaluates the application of spatial data and is structured around three conceptual methods of riparian delineation; fixed width, variable width by river corridor features and variable width by context of local pressures or required outcomes. We explore process representation and incorporation into management across main riparian functions (hydrological connectivity, water quality, shading, resource transfers and habitat provision). Translating spatial data into functions informs the ability to go beyond contemporary, generally fixed width approaches using basic structural components towards planning to better target functional attributes to optimise ecosystem protection.

Landscapes are defined as ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’ (Council of Europe, 2000). Cultural landscapes are defined by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1992) as distinct geographical areas or properties uniquely ‘represent[ing] the combined work of nature and of man’. It also describes cultural landscapes as a ‘diversity of manifestations of the interaction between humankind and its natural environment’, and that the protection of traditional cultural landscapes can contribute to maintaining biological diversity. Indeed, Pilgrim and Pretty (2010) propose that the resilience of ecocultural systems is at its strongest when biological and cultural diversity can be considered as an interdependent whole.

Precipitation variation and soil and water conservation (SWC) measures mostly determine the dynamics of streamflow in the Hulu River Basin. In particular, SWC measures play an essential role in controlling streamflow reduction and soil loss in the Hulu River Basin. The objective of this study is to quantitatively explore the effect of SWC measures and precipitation on streamflow changes in the middle and lower reaches of the Hulu River Basin. In this study, a long-term measured annual streamflow data from two major hydrological stations was used to analyze variations in streamflow in this basin. The Mann-Kendall trend test and the change-point analysis method were applied to analyze the trend of streamflow datasets. The results indicated that the annual streamflow in the middle and lower basin of the Hulu River (1975-2016) had a similar decreasing trend to streamflow change of the entire basin (1960-2016), with the abrupt change point of annual streamflow occurred in the year 1986. In addition, the streamflow exhibited a slightly increasing trend due to the more precipitation increase in the basin throughout 1999-2016. From 1999 to 2016, the impact of precipitation and SWC measures on streamflow is quantitatively assessed by using a multiple linear regression model. The result showed that SWC measures could effectively delay and reduce streamflow. The analysis of the regression coefficients suggested that SWC measures had a positive ecological effect on streamflow decrease, whereas precipitation had a significantly positive effect on streamflow increase. The precipitation had a higher contribution to streamflow changes than SWC measures. For the change of annual streamflow, precipitation contributed 79.6%, the Grain-for-Green program and check dams contributed 13.4% and 7%, respectively. A comparison of the impact of SWC measures on streamflow showed that the Grain-for-Green program measure had a more significant impact on streamflow reduction in the middle and lower reaches of the Hulu River Basin. In conclusion, these results can guide future water resource planning and management, and the allocation of SWC measures in the entire Hulu River Basin.

Forests and woodlands offer many benefits to people. They can provide timber and food, store carbon to help deal with the effects of climate change, decrease flooding and soil erosion, and provide recreation for people and habitat for a multitude of species we care to conserve. Scottish forests cover roughly 19% of the country. The Scottish government has the ambition to add several thousand hectares a year over the next decades, to support the rural economy, the environment, and communities. It is important that a substantial proportion of the expansion is made up by native trees and shrub species due to better habitat for wildlife. These challenges were explored with a case study of virtual forest landscape from Cairngorms National Park (CNP) which was used to test preferences for scenarios of future woodland expansion. Spatial Multi-criteria Analysis (sMCA) has been applied to decide where to plant new forests and woodlands, recognizing a range of land-use objectives while acknowledging concerns about possible conflicts with other uses of the land. The tools used in the development and implementation of the 3D model were PC and Mobile based, and enable the incorporation of interactive functionality for manipulating features. Model inputs comprise 5m DTM, 25cm Aerial Imagery, 3D Tree Species, GIS layers of Current Forest and Woodland Expansion inside CNP. Afforestation animation has been attached in Google My Maps. This is through setting different keyframes by storyboard camera path animation around the area of CNP. Stereo panorama has been applied to selection of woodland expansion scenarios (e.g. Broadleaved potential corridors, Conifer potential corridors), which is viewed with mobile technology and Virtual Reality (VR) equipment. The 3D model with simulation of woodland expansion was used at the event of 2019 Royal Highland Show and European Forest Institute Annual Conference 2019. Audience feedback suggested the enhancement of user interaction through VR has potential implications for the planning of future woodland to increase the effectiveness of their use and contribution to wider sustainable ecosystems.

Chalara dieback of ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is a disease of ash trees caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea. The disease causes leaf loss and crown dieback, usually leading to tree death. First found in the UK in February 2012, local spread is by wind and by movement of diseased plants over longer distances. Woodlands in Scotland are infected, the distribution of sites of which is reported by the Forestry Commission, and can be viewed on the interactive Chalara (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) infection map. Background information on the disease, its origins, symptoms and precautions to reduce risks of spread are available from the Forestry Commission here. The James Hutton Institute has developed a Virtual Reality model to present information about the symptoms and different stages and spread of infection of Chalara ash dieback on woodlands. The model was designed to represent characteristics of the vegetation and topography of a site in north-west Scotland. Interactive functions have been included which enable the presentation of a narrative about the Chalara Ash Dieback threat to woodlands, including scenarios of spread of infection, symptoms of infection, the death of trees, and the regeneration of woodland. The model can be downloaded and used in a PC or virtual reality environment. Guidelines are provided, and links to the relevant software for its use. Software: The software required to use the model in Virtual Reality is ‘BS Contact Stereo’. The free to use, demonstration version of the software package can be download from here. The 3D model can be used through BS Contact Stereo for a Virtual Reality headset (e.g. Oculus Rift). [Note: Users may notice a ‘blue dot’ floating across the screen when they are exploring the Virtual Reality model. That has no effect or role in the model. It is a feature of the demonstration free-to-use package.] Start model: To start the model, users should load and play the file: AshDieback_Main.wrl. Navigation: Navigation of the 3D environment of the woodland can be by use of a keyboard or Xbox controller. More information about the model and disease are is available at: Chalara: Ash Die-back Virtual Woodland Environment. Photographs can be accessed of the Virtual Reality model in use with an Oculus Rift headset, and in the Virtual Landscape Theatre.

Immersive Technology has been widely discussed in various applications; the development of this technology creates an experience which is not possible in our physical reality. The rapid development of computer software and hardware makes the 3D visualisation and simulation of real-world scenarios could be represented in much higher resolutions. Recent studies show that visualising natural disasters immersively could be beneficial to increase people’s awareness and prepare the public for future event. In a recent research project, we visualized and simulated a flooding event, Storm Frank, in 2015 and its damage to the local residence of a town called Ballater outside Aberdeen, UK on Virtual Reality form. To provide accurate simulation, topographic data and real-world environmental data such as weather, rainfalls, river level data etc., are applied and analysed in this project. This immersive experience provides significant opportunities for effective communication among all users. The project used 3D modelling and simulation of the flooding encompasses the development and exemplification of the model of the town and real scenario flooding event, retrieving data from various sources such as geographical data and environment data. The gamification of this application shows great potential to be used for public engagement event, policy making and educational purposes.

The Sponge City concept has been promoted as a major programme of work to address increasing flood risk in urban areas, in combination with wider benefits for water resources and urban renewal. However, realization of the concept requires collaborative engagement with a wide range of professionals and with affected communities. Visualization can play an important role in this process. In this research, a sponge city flood simulation and forecasting system has been built which combines hydrological data, topographic data, GIS data and hydrodynamic models in real-time and interactive display in a three-dimensional environment. Actual and design flood events in a pilot sponge city have been simulated. The validation results show that the simulated urban water accumulation process is consistent with the actual monitoring data. Use of advanced virtual reality technology can enable simulations to be placed in the wider design context including enhanced awareness of multiple functions of urban ecosystems. This procedure can therefore reduce the information communication gap and encourage innovation regarding low impact development required for sponge city construction.

Mitigating and adapting to climate change includes a requirement to evaluate the role of future land uses in delivering robust integrated responses that are sensitive to local landscape contexts. In practice, this emphasises the need for community engagement, planning and inclusive decision-making. Community engagement may be potentially facilitated by the use of spatially explicit quantitative scenarios of land-use change in combination with interactive visualisation. This requires a coherent framework to integrate spatial data modelling, analytical capabilities and visualisation tools in a format that will also engage diverse public audiences. These challenges were explored with a case study of virtual landscapes from N-E Scotland that was used to test preferences for scenarios of future land use. Visualisations employed texture-based rendering rather than full photo-realistic rendering to facilitate interactivity and this provided additional scope for audiences to explore multiple future scenarios compared to the present landscape. Interactive voting in a virtual landscape theatre suggested preferences for visual diversity, good stewardship and perceived naturalness that should be considered in developing planned responses to change. Further investigation of preferences was conducted using interactive 3D features located within the landscape. Study findings are reviewed against objectives for inclusive engagement in the Digital Earth agenda and used to make further recommendations on the use of scenarios and visualisation tools. In particular, technical advances in user engagement need to be developed in conjunction with emerging good practice that addresses ethical, behavioural and inclusion issues so that the content is presented in as transparent and unbiased format as possible.

. Many flood warning systems were developed for 2D environments and limited on specific flood hazard. With the purpose of overcoming these disadvantages, it is necessary to propose new methodologies and techniques for 3D real time flood simulation. In this paper, a novel flood hazard warning system has been proposed. It describes and defines the relationship between the different parts of the simulation system in order to offer not only numeric data or figures, but also more meaningful and appealing 3D visual information. Consequently, the performance of this simulation system depends on the quality of the three sub systems: 3D real world modelling system with GIS data, 3D environment reconstruction system and 3D flood simulation system. A new flooding model has been developed which can handle dynamic flood behaviour and predict inundation areas in real time. In order to validate our flood warning system, the region of Tewkesbury in England has been simulated with a potential flood. The flood spreading process is shown during different time and the detailed inundation area is presented for further disaster evaluation. The study achieved two main objectives: implementing a useful flood simulation with real world model and reconstructed environment for flood hazard warning; producing a friendly simulation system interface for either a decision maker or experienced user.

Many flood warning systems were developed for 2D environments and limited on specific flood hazard. With the purpose of overcoming these disadvantages, it is necessary to propose new methodologies and techniques for 3D real time flood simulation. In this paper, a novel flood hazard warning system has been proposed. It describes and defines the relationship between the different parts of the simulation system in order to offer not only numeric data or figures, but also more meaningful and appealing 3D visual information. Consequently, the performance of this simulation system depends on the quality of the three sub systems: 3D real world modelling system with GIS data, 3D environment reconstruction system and 3D flood simulation system. A new flooding model has been developed which can handle dynamic flood behaviour and predict inundation areas in real time. In order to validate our flood warning system, the region of Tewkesbury in England has been simulated with a potential flood. The flood spreading process is shown during different time and the detailed inundation area is presented for further disaster evaluation. The study achieved two main objectives: implementing a useful flood simulation with real world model and reconstructed environment for flood hazard warning; producing a friendly simulation system interface for either a decision maker or experienced user.

Wind energy is identified as having a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emission, and Scottish Government targets for the generation of energy from renewable sources. Public policy emphasises the importance of using an ecosystem approach, and the role of public engagement in decisions about future uses of land and sea. A prototype 3D model was developed to present a loch with hypothetical wind turbines on the west coast of Scotland. The model was used to identify issues arising between the growing interest marine renewables, land use changes in line with changing policy and the potential effects on existing seascapes and marine industries and activities. An interface has been developed to provide interactive movement of features in models, including hotkeys to: (i) Switching between images (e.g. 1:50,000 map and aerial images) and GIS Data layers (e.g. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) designations); (ii) Introducing new features (e.g. houses, wind turbines, trees); (iii) ‘drag and drop’ features, guided by the audience. The virtual reality model was tested with a range of different audience types at events in Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, and Aberdeen on the east coast through Virtual Landscape Theatre (VLT) and Oculus Rift. Factors identified for detailed testing included the significance of lighting conditions on the east and west coast, sea state on perceptions of seascape and wind energy generation, and people’s activities at different times of the day.

Water body is a fundamental element in urban ecosystems and water mapping is critical for urban and landscape planning and management. As remote sensing has increasingly been used for water mapping in rural areas, this spatially explicit approach applied in urban area is also a challenging work due to the water bodies mainly distributed in a small size and the spectral confusion widely exists between water and complex features in the urban environment. Water index is the most common method for water extraction at pixel level, and spectral mixture analysis (SMA) has been widely employed in analyzing urban environment at subpixel level recently. In this paper, we introduce an automatic subpixel water mapping method in urban areas using multispectral remote sensing data. The objectives of this research consist of: (1) developing an automatic land-water mixed pixels extraction technique by water index; (2) deriving the most representative endmembers of water and land by utilizing neighboring water pixels and adaptive iterative optimal neighboring land pixel for respectively; (3) applying a linear unmixing model for subpixel water fraction estimation. Specifically, to automatically extract land-water pixels, the locally weighted scatter plot smoothing is firstly used to the original histogram curve of WI image . And then the Ostu threshold is derived as the start point to select land-water pixels based on histogram of the WI image with the land threshold and water threshold determination through the slopes of histogram curve . Based on the previous process at pixel level, the image is divided into three parts: water pixels, land pixels, and mixed land-water pixels. Then the spectral mixture analysis (SMA) is applied to land-water mixed pixels for water fraction estimation at subpixel level. With the assumption that the endmember signature of a target pixel should be more similar to adjacent pixels due to spatial dependence, the endmember of water and land are determined by neighboring pure land or pure water pixels within a distance. To obtaining the most representative endmembers in SMA, we designed an adaptive iterative endmember selection method based on the spatial similarity of adjacent pixels. According to the spectral similarity in a spatial adjacent region, the spectrum of land endmember is determined by selecting the most representative land pixel in a local window, and the spectrum of water endmember is determined by calculating an average of the water pixels in the local window. The proposed hierarchical processing method based on WI and SMA (WISMA) is applied to urban areas for reliability evaluation using the Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images. For comparison, four methods at pixel level and subpixel level were chosen respectively. Results indicate that the water maps generated by the proposed method correspond as closely with the truth water maps with subpixel precision. And the results showed that the WISMA achieved the best performance in water mapping with comprehensive analysis of different accuracy evaluation indexes (RMSE and SE).

The objective of this paper is to report on the development of prototype models for use in raising public awareness of changes in urban areas, focusing on green spaces, and testing responses to scenarios of change. Specifically, the focus is on the design of appropriate types of outdoor features for community planning and engagement. This modelling is fulfilled using the Autodesk Maya, Google SketchUp and ArcGIS software packages together in a novel combination of spatial and visualisation tools. The experiment results show evidence that different types of 3D iconic symbols with interactive communication will influence participation and decision making in land use planning.