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Anthropocene Challenges: Exploitation of Resources vs. Preservation of Natural Systems
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Anthropocene Challenges: Exploitation of Resources vs. Preservation of Natural Systems

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Science and Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2020) | Viewed by 7584

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Pilario Costagliola

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Florence, 50121 Florence, Italy
Interests: heavy metal pollution; arsenic; mercury; ore deposits; stream sediment quality; water chemistry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Marc W. Beutel

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of California Merced, Merced, CA 95343, USA
Interests: surface water quality; lake and reservoir management; mercury cycling in aquatic ecosystems; natural treatment systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Twentieth-century human development has brought the Earth into a new epoch that has been defined by many researchers as the Anthropocene. Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has experienced considerable growth. However, in the twenty-first century, we will face scarcity in critical resources, the degradation of ecosystem and the erosion of the planet’s capability to absorb the environmental pressure caused by our presence on the Earth. A sharply-increasing population, which is particularly concentrated in urban areas, alongside strong economic growth, has resulted in a rising demand for natural resources, including food, soil, water and energy. The anthropogenic forcing of the Earth Surface System is now equivalent or even greater than the natural one. Although economic growth has improved human well-being, growth in the demand for resources is putting increasing pressure on the environment.

On the other hand, natural systems have the ability to recover from disturbances and to tolerate or adapt to changing conditions under anthropogenic pressure, thus showing a resilience behaviour that could provide precious hints for a new way to design the environmental management.

In the Anthropocene, scientists have to face a new and challenging problem: How to support human well-being without compromising the Earth’s capacity to provide the resources that human societies need. A pivotal role for this aim is played by the geo scientists involved in deepening the knowledge of our, and other, planets.

This Special Issue focuses on how this knowledge may support our future challenges, including:

  • Soil/water management and quality
  • Heavy metal pollution, remediation, restoration
  • Cohabitation with heavy metals anomalies
  • Circular economy: re-utilization of wastes
  • New ore deposits and geo-resources
  • Renewable energy sources
  • Urban geology, smart cities and health
  • Environmental resilience

Dr. Pilario Costagliola
Guest Editor

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. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2500 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

  • heavy metal
  • smart cities
  • wastes
  • water quality
  • environment
  • circular economy

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 4949 KiB  
Article
Rapid Loss of Tidal Flats in the Yangtze River Delta since 1974
by Xing Li, Xin Zhang, Chuanyin Qiu, Yuanqiang Duan, Shu’an Liu, Dan Chen, Lianpeng Zhang and Changming Zhu
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(5), 1636; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051636 - 3 Mar 2020
Cited by 24 | Viewed by 3511
Abstract
As the home to national nature reserves and a Ramsar wetland, the tidal flats of the Yangtze River Delta are of great significance for ecological security, at both the local and global scales. However, a comprehensive understanding of the spatiotemporal conditions of the [...] Read more.
As the home to national nature reserves and a Ramsar wetland, the tidal flats of the Yangtze River Delta are of great significance for ecological security, at both the local and global scales. However, a comprehensive understanding of the spatiotemporal conditions of the tidal flats in the Yangtze River Delta remains lacking. Here, we propose using remote sensing to obtain a detailed spatiotemporal profile of the tidal flats, using all available Landsat images from 1974 to 2018 with the help of the Google Earth Engine cloud platform. In addition, reclamation data were manually extracted from time series Landsat images for the same period. We found that approximately 40.0% (34.9–43.1%) of the tidal flats in the study area have been lost since 1980, the year in which the tidal flat area was maximal. The change in the tidal flat areas was consistent with the change in the riverine sediment supply. We also found that the cumulative reclamation areas totaled 816.6 km2 and 431.9 km2 in the Yangtze estuary zone and along the Jiangsu coast, respectively, between 1974 and 2018. Because of reclamation, some areas (e.g., the Hengsha eastern shoal and Pudong bank), which used to be quite rich, have lost most of their tidal flats. Currently, almost 70% of the remaining tidal flats are located in the shrinking branch (North Branch) and the two National Nature Reserves (Chongming Dongtan and Jiuduansha) in the Yangtze estuary zone. Consequently, the large-scale loss of tidal flats observed was primarily associated with reduced sediment supply and land reclamation at the time scale of the study. Because increasing demand for land and rising sea levels are expected in the future, immediate steps should be taken to prevent the further deterioration of this valuable ecosystem. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anthropocene Challenges: Exploitation of Resources vs. Preservation of Natural Systems)
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18 pages, 6915 KiB  
Article
Quantitative Evaluation of the Eco-Environment in a Coalfield Based on Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Imagery: A Case Study of Yuxian, China
by Xue Wang, Kun Tan, Kailei Xu, Yu Chen and Jianwei Ding
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(3), 511; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16030511 - 12 Feb 2019
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3632
Abstract
With the exploitation of coalfields, the eco-environment around the coalfields can become badly damaged. To address this issue, “mine greening” has been proposed by the Ministry of Land and Resources of China. The sustainable development of mine environments has now become one of [...] Read more.
With the exploitation of coalfields, the eco-environment around the coalfields can become badly damaged. To address this issue, “mine greening” has been proposed by the Ministry of Land and Resources of China. The sustainable development of mine environments has now become one of the most prominent issues in China. In this study, we aimed to make use of Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI images obtained between 2005 and 2016 to analyze the eco-environment in a coalfield. Land cover was implemented as the basic evaluation factor to establish the evaluation model for the eco-environment. Analysis and investigation of the eco-environment in the Yuxian coalfield was conducted using a novel evaluation model, based on the biological abundance index, vegetation coverage index, water density index, and natural geographical factors. The weight of each indicator was determined by an analytic hierarchy process. Meanwhile, we also used the classic ecological footprint to calculate the ecological carrying capacity in order to verify the effectiveness of the evaluation model. Results showed that the eco-environment index illustrated a slowly increasing tendency over the study period, and the ecological quality could be considered as “good”. The results of the evaluation model showed a strong correlation with the ecological carrying capacity with a correlation coefficient of 0.9734. In conclusion, the evaluation method is a supplement to the time-series quantitative evaluation of the eco-environment, and also helps us to explore the eco-environment in the mining area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anthropocene Challenges: Exploitation of Resources vs. Preservation of Natural Systems)
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