Relating Land Use and Human Intra-City Mobility

Understanding human mobility patterns—how people move in their everyday lives—is an interdisciplinary research field. It is a question with roots back to the 19^th century that has been dramatically revitalized with the recent increase in data availability. Models of human mobility often take the population distribution as a starting point. Another, sometimes more accurate, data source is land-use maps. In this paper, we discuss how the intra-city movement patterns, and consequently population distribution, can be predicted from such data sources. As a link between land use and mobility, we show that the purposes of people’s trips are strongly correlated with the land use of the trip’s origin and destination. We calibrate, validate and discuss our model using survey data.     

基于韧性原则——以天津梅江地区某社区规划为例的社区步行景观设计策略

随着城市生态环境危机和自然灾害日益严重,提升城市韧性、促进城市生态系统的完善已成为当前学界的共识。社区作为城市的基本组成单元,是实现这一目标的基础;而步行景观系统的友好性应更加强调发挥其应对扰动、减轻灾害影响的能力。基于韧性原则的社区步行景观设计策略从灾害发生的时序及韧性的作用方式2方面,提出社区在生态韧性、防灾韧性、空间韧性3方面的相关策略,从而提升社区韧性,促进城市的可持续发展。     

Evidence for Patterns of Selective Urban Migration in the Greater Indus Valley (2600-1900 BC): A Lead and Strontium Isotope Mortuary Analysis

Just as modern nation-states struggle to manage the cultural and economic impacts of migration, ancient civilizations dealt with similar external pressures and set policies to regulate people’s movements. In one of the earliest urban societies, the Indus Civilization, mechanisms linking city populations to hinterland groups remain enigmatic in the absence of written documents. However, isotopic data from human tooth enamel associated with Harappa Phase (2600-1900 BC) cemetery burials at Harappa (Pakistan) and Farmana (India) provide individual biogeochemical life histories of migration. Strontium and lead isotope ratios allow us to reinterpret the Indus tradition of cemetery inhumation as part of a specific and highly regulated institution of migration. Intra-individual isotopic shifts are consistent with immigration from resource-rich hinterlands during childhood. Furthermore, mortuary populations formed over hundreds of years and composed almost entirely of first-generation immigrants suggest that inhumation was the final step in a process linking certain urban Indus communities to diverse hinterland groups. Additional multi disciplinary analyses are warranted to confirm inferred patterns of Indus mobility, but the available isotopic data suggest that efforts to classify and regulate human movement in the ancient Indus region likely helped structure socioeconomic integration across an ethnically diverse landscape.     

What Is the Association between Absolute Child Poverty,Poor Governance,and Natural Disasters? A Global Comparison of Some of the Realities of Climate Change

The paper explores the degree to which exposure to natural disasters and poor governance (quality of governance) is associated with absolute child poverty in sixty-seven middle- and low-income countries. The data is representative for about 2.8 billion of the world´s population. Institutionalist tend to argue that many of society’s ills, including poverty, derive from fragile or inefficient institutions. However, our findings show that although increasing quality of government tends to be associated with less poverty, the negative effects of natural disasters on child poverty are independent of a country´s institutional efficiency. Increasing disaster victims (killed and affected) is associated with higher rates of child poverty. A child´s estimated odds ratio to be in a state of absolute poverty increases by about a factor of 5.7 [95% CI: 1.7 to 18.7] when the average yearly toll of disasters in the child´s country increases by one on a log-10 scale. Better governance correlates with less child poverty, but it does not modify the correlation between child poverty and natural disasters. The results are based on hierarchical regression models that partition the variance into three parts: child, household, and country. The models were cross-sectional and based on observational data from the Demographic Health Survey and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which were collected at the beginning of the twenty-first millennium. The Sustainable Development Goals are a principle declaration to halt climate change, but they lack a clear plan on how the burden of this change should be shared by the global community. Based on our results, we suggest that the development agencies should take this into account and to articulate more equitable global policies to protect the most vulnerable, specifically children.     

The effect of habitat and human disturbance on the spatiotemporal activity of two urban carnivores: The results of an intensive camera trap study

With rising urbanization, the presence of urban wildlife is becoming more common, increasing the need for wildlife‐friendly spaces in urban planning. Despite this, understanding is limited to how wildlife exploits urban environments and interacts with human populations, and this is vital to our ability to manage and conserve wildlife in urban habitats. Here, we investigate how two urban mammal species, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and the European badger (Meles meles), exploit urban environments. Using intensive camera trap surveys, we assessed how habitat and human disturbance influenced the spatiotemporal activity of these species across south‐west London. Firstly, we found elevated activity levels of both species at boundaries and within built‐up areas, suggesting movement paths follow anthropogenic features. However, badgers were most active in woodland, indicating the importance of high cover habitats suitable for setts and foraging. Secondly, we found badger activity levels were negatively affected by human activity, whilst foxes were unaffected. Further investigation suggested foxes may adapt their activity patterns to avoid human disturbance, with badger activity patterns less plastic. Whilst the results of this study are useful for both the conservation and management of urban wildlife populations, these results also show potential factors which either facilitate or limit wildlife from fully exploiting urban environments.     

长三角城市群城市洪涝韧性与生态系统服务的耦合协调关系

厘清城市洪涝韧性与生态系统服务之间耦合协调关系,可为城市防洪减灾和生态文明建设提供重要决策参考。综合运用基于麻雀算法的投影寻踪模型、InVEST模型和耦合协调度模型,在分析2000-2020年长三角城市群的城市洪涝韧性与水源涵养、水质净化、土壤保持和气候调节四种生态系统服务时空格局基础上,尝试探索两者耦合协调关系及其时空演变特征。研究发现:(1)长三角城市群的城市洪涝韧性水平呈现"N"型增加趋势,并呈现"上海>江苏>浙江>安徽"的空间格局,表明经济水平越高的城市展现出更强的洪涝韧性,经济是影响城市洪涝韧性波动的主要因素,而自然韧性成为城市洪涝韧性提升的关键短板;(2)生态系统服务存在显著的空间异质性,高植被覆盖的南部地区提供了更高的生态系统服务,从时间维度看其空间分布是稳定的,水源涵养和水质净化服务总体呈向好趋势,土壤保持服务整体呈现倒"N"型增加,气候调节服务呈现微弱的下降趋势;(3)城市洪涝韧性与生态系统服务的耦合协调度在研究期内较为稳定,且与生态系统服务的时空变化趋于一致,呈现"南高北低、由西南向东北逐渐减弱"的趋势,生态系统服务较高的城市,表现出更好的耦合协调性,且随着生态系统服务的增加而改善。因此,长三角城市群有必要从提高生态系统服务功能的角度出发,因地制宜、分类施策,促进城市洪涝韧性与生态系统服务的协调发展。     

The Impact of Human Mobility on HIV Transmission in Kenya

Disease spreads as a result of people moving and coming in contact with each other. Thus the mobility patterns of individuals are crucial in understanding disease dynamics. Here we study the impact of human mobility on HIV transmission in different parts of Kenya. We build an SIR metapopulation model that incorporates the different regions within the country. We parameterise the model using census data, HIV data and mobile phone data adopted to track human mobility. We found that movement between different regions appears to have a relatively small overall effect on the total increase in HIV cases in Kenya. However, the most important consequence of movement patterns was transmission of the disease from high infection to low prevalence areas. Mobility slightly increases HIV incidence rates in regions with initially low HIV prevalences and slightly decreases incidences in regions with initially high HIV prevalence. We discuss how regional HIV models could be used in public-health planning. This paper is a first attempt to model spread of HIV using mobile phone data, and we also discuss limitations to the approach.     

A tale of many cities: universal patterns in human urban mobility

The advent of geographic online social networks such as Foursquare, where users voluntarily signal their current location, opens the door to powerful studies on human movement. In particular the fine granularity of the location data, with GPS accuracy down to 10 meters, and the worldwide scale of Foursquare adoption are unprecedented. In this paper we study urban mobility patterns of people in several metropolitan cities around the globe by analyzing a large set of Foursquare users. Surprisingly, while there are variations in human movement in different cities, our analysis shows that those are predominantly due to different distributions of places across different urban environments. Moreover, a universal law for human mobility is identified, which isolates as a key component the rank-distance, factoring in the number of places between origin and destination, rather than pure physical distance, as considered in some previous works. Building on our findings, we also show how a rank-based movement model accurately captures real human movements in different cities.     

Factors Associated with Resilience of Adult Survivors Five Years after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in China

Given the paucity of quantitative empirical research on survivors’ resilience and its predictors in the context of long-term recovery after disasters, we examined how resilience predictors differed by gender among adult survivors five years after the Sichuan earthquake. This was a cross-sectional survey study of adult survivors (N = 495; aged 18–60) living in reconstructed communities five years into the recovery process after the Wenchuan earthquake. The instruments we used included assessments of sociodemographic characteristics and earthquake exposure level, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Social Support Rating Scale. Support-seeking behaviors emerged as a significant predictor of male survivors’ resilience, while subjective support and marital status were found to be predictors of female survivors’ resilience. Annual household income and chronic disease were predictors for both male and female groups. The findings of this study can be used in devising methods to boost survivors’ resilience by promoting their satisfaction with social support and their ability to obtain effective support. Additionally, the results suggest how to assist survivors who may have relatively poor resilience.     

Tropical grassy biomes: linking ecology,human use and conservation

Tropical grassy biomes (TGBs) are changing rapidly the world over through a coalescence of high rates of land-use change, global change and altered disturbance regimes that maintain the ecosystem structure and function of these biomes. Our theme issue brings together the latest research examining the characterization, complex ecology, drivers of change, and human use and ecosystem services of TGBs. Recent advances in ecology and evolution have facilitated a new perspective on these biomes. However, there continues to be controversies over their classification and state dynamics that demonstrate critical data and knowledge gaps in our quantitative understanding of these geographically dispersed regions. We highlight an urgent need to improve ecological understanding in order to effectively predict the sensitivity and resilience of TGBs under future scenarios of global change. With human reliance on TGBs increasing and their propensity for change, ecological and evolutionary understanding of these biomes is central to the dual goals of sustaining their ecological integrity and the diverse services these landscapes provide to millions of people.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Tropical grassy biomes: linking ecology, human use and conservation’.     

Millennial-scale faunal record reveals differential resilience of European large mammals to human impacts across the Holocene

The use of short-term indicators for understanding patterns and processes of biodiversity loss can mask longer-term faunal responses to human pressures. We use an extensive database of approximately 18 700 mammalian zooarchaeological records for the last 11 700 years across Europe to reconstruct spatio-temporal dynamics of Holocene range change for 15 large-bodied mammal species. European mammals experienced protracted, non-congruent range losses, with significant declines starting in some species approximately 3000 years ago and continuing to the present, and with the timing, duration and magnitude of declines varying individually between species. Some European mammals became globally extinct during the Holocene, whereas others experienced limited or no significant range change. These findings demonstrate the relatively early onset of prehistoric human impacts on postglacial biodiversity, and mirror species-specific patterns of mammalian extinction during the Late Pleistocene. Herbivores experienced significantly greater declines than carnivores, revealing an important historical extinction filter that informs our understanding of relative resilience and vulnerability to human pressures for different taxa. We highlight the importance of large-scale, long-term datasets for understanding complex protracted extinction processes, although the dynamic pattern of progressive faunal depletion of European mammal assemblages across the Holocene challenges easy identification of ‘static’ past baselines to inform current-day environmental management and restoration.     

Resilience and Alternative Stable States of Tropical Forest Landscapes under Shifting Cultivation Regimes

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecological model and implement it with literature-derived ecological parameters for six shifting cultivation landscapes from three continents. Analyzing the model with the tools of dynamical systems analysis, we show that such landscapes exhibit two stable states, one characterized by high forest cover and agricultural productivity, and another with much lower values of these traits. For some combinations of agricultural pressure and ecological parameters both of these states can potentially exist, and the actual state of the forest depends critically on its historic state. In many cases, the landscapes’ ‘ecological resilience’, or amount of forest that could be destroyed without shifting out of the forested stability domain, declined substantially at lower levels of agricultural pressure than would lead to maximum productivity. A measure of ‘engineering resilience’, the recovery time from standardized disturbances, was independent of ecological resilience. These findings suggest that maximization of short-term agricultural output may have counterproductive impacts on the long-term productivity of shifting cultivation landscapes and the persistence of forested areas.     

Why Movement Is Captured by Music,but Less by Speech: Role of Temporal Regularity

Music has a pervasive tendency to rhythmically engage our body. In contrast, synchronization with speech is rare. Music’s superiority over speech in driving movement probably results from isochrony of musical beats, as opposed to irregular speech stresses. Moreover, the presence of regular patterns of embedded periodicities (i.e., meter) may be critical in making music particularly conducive to movement. We investigated these possibilities by asking participants to synchronize with isochronous auditory stimuli (target), while music and speech distractors were presented at one of various phase relationships with respect to the target. In Exp. 1, familiar musical excerpts and fragments of children poetry were used as distractors. The stimuli were manipulated in terms of beat/stress isochrony and average pitch to achieve maximum comparability. In Exp. 2, the distractors were well-known songs performed with lyrics, on a reiterated syllable, and spoken lyrics, all having the same meter. Music perturbed synchronization with the target stimuli more than speech fragments. However, music superiority over speech disappeared when distractors shared isochrony and the same meter. Music’s peculiar and regular temporal structure is likely to be the main factor fostering tight coupling between sound and movement.     

国外韧性城市形态研究述评

面对突发的自然和人为灾害,城市表现出极大的脆弱性。韧性城市形态被认为是化解城市脆弱性的关键得到关注,梳理国外研究成果对应对我国快速城市化进程中的不确定灾害风险具有重要意义。以韧性城市形态为主题,从概念与特征、形态要素韧性表现、评估及韧性设计等方面追踪国外研究进展。研究结果表明:国外文献重点探讨了形态与自然灾害的关联;韧性城市形态的概念尚未达成一致意见;从宏观、中观、微观空间层次视角探讨城市形态要素韧性表现成果较多;形态要素韧性评估集中于道路网络要素的韧性表现;形态要素韧性设计关键在于空间异质性。基于分析结果可知,我国未来研究重点应集中在全方位构建韧性城市形态研究框架、丰富并拓展形态要素韧性评估方法与技术、重视形态要素空间异质性等方面。     

A Neural Computational Model of Incentive Salience

Incentive salience is a motivational property with ‘magnet-like’ qualities. When attributed to reward-predicting stimuli (cues), incentive salience triggers a pulse of ‘wanting’ and an individual is pulled toward the cues and reward. A key computational question is how incentive salience is generated during a cue re-encounter, which combines both learning and the state of limbic brain mechanisms. Learning processes, such as temporal-difference models, provide one way for stimuli to acquire cached predictive values of rewards. However, empirical data show that subsequent incentive values are also modulated on the fly by dynamic fluctuation in physiological states, altering cached values in ways requiring additional motivation mechanisms. Dynamic modulation of incentive salience for a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (CS or cue) occurs during certain states, without necessarily requiring (re)learning about the cue. In some cases, dynamic modulation of cue value occurs during states that are quite novel, never having been experienced before, and even prior to experience of the associated unconditioned reward in the new state. Such cases can include novel drug-induced mesolimbic activation and addictive incentive-sensitization, as well as natural appetite states such as salt appetite. Dynamic enhancement specifically raises the incentive salience of an appropriate CS, without necessarily changing that of other CSs. Here we suggest a new computational model that modulates incentive salience by integrating changing physiological states with prior learning. We support the model with behavioral and neurobiological data from empirical tests that demonstrate dynamic elevations in cue-triggered motivation (involving natural salt appetite, and drug-induced intoxication and sensitization). Our data call for a dynamic model of incentive salience, such as presented here. Computational models can adequately capture fluctuations in cue-triggered ‘wanting’ only by incorporating modulation of previously learned values by natural appetite and addiction-related states.     

Other Dark Sides of Resilience: Politics and Power in Community-Based Efforts to Strengthen Resilience

ABSTRACT

Oceanic people and places are increasingly labelled as either ‘resilient’ or ‘vulnerable’ to disasters and climate change. Resilience is often described in disaster discourse as a strategy designed to overcome vulnerability by helping communities to ‘bounce back’ in the wake of ‘natural’ disasters. Using ethnographic research conducted with Community Disaster and Climate Change Committees (CDCs) in Vanuatu in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Pam, this paper seeks to problematise disaster responses that see the ‘community’ as a space to be acted upon by outsiders, or where people will respond in a unified way to the challenges of rebuilding after disaster. Using political ecology framings this paper critiques the ideas of resilience that appear entrenched in community-based disaster and climate change adaptation discourse and practice in Oceania. Rather than presupposing resilience or vulnerability, this paper details the dispersal and distribution power and agency amongst individual actors and groups that either supported or manipulated, the distribution of goods by Community Disaster Committees. In this way, it moves beyond the limitations of conceptual framings of resilience in disaster management and climate change into a more considered appraisal of power, by exploring what James Ferguson has termed ‘the politics of distribution’ in the context of disaster.     

The Role of the Sedimentary Regime in Shaping the Distribution of Subtidal Sandbank Environments and the Associated Meiofaunal Nematode Communities: An Example from the Southern North Sea

We combined sediment and faunal data to explore the role of the sedimentary regime in shaping the distribution of subtidal sandbank environments and the associated meiofaunal nematode communities at Broken Bank and Swarte Bank, in the southern North Sea. A variety of sediment transport processes occur in the area, differing in the frequency and magnitude of sediment mobility, and the continuum between erosion, translation and sediment accumulation. The seabed contained a variety of bedforms, including longitudinal furrows, and small to very large sandwaves. The bed sediments were dominated by fine and medium sands, with admixtures of silt and gravel. Based on sedimentary bedforms and grain size analysis, a total of 11 sedimentary facies were delineated, of which 8 were analysed in detail for their relationships with the meiofauna. The sedimentary facies fell clearly into groups of facies, respectively representing high, high-moderate and moderate, and episodic sediment mobility. For those sedimentary facies where daily movement of sediments and bedforms occurred (‘high’ sediment mobility), the resulting spatially homogeneous environments were dominated by an impoverished nematode community comprising small deposit feeders and large predators. Resistance to sediment movement and the ability to exploit alternative food sources were prominent functional features of the successful colonisers. Those facies characterised by relatively infrequent sediment mobility (‘episodic’ and ‘high-moderate and moderate’ sediment mobility) comprised a heterogeneous suite of benthic habitats, containing taxonomically and functionally diverse assemblages of nematodes of various sizes, feeding types and reproductive potential. Faunal distribution patterns here indicated trade-offs between the resistance to sediment movement, environmental tolerance and competitive abilities. Our focus on diverse assemblages of organisms with high turnover times, inhabiting highly dynamic sedimentary environments, has revealed new animal-sediment relationships of relevance to pure and applied science.     

Local Optimization Strategies in Urban Vehicular Mobility

The comprehension of vehicular traffic in urban environments is crucial to achieve a good management of the complex processes arising from people collective motion. Even allowing for the great complexity of human beings, human behavior turns out to be subject to strong constraints—physical, environmental, social, economic—that induce the emergence of common patterns. The observation and understanding of those patterns is key to setup effective strategies to optimize the quality of life in cities while not frustrating the natural need for mobility. In this paper we focus on vehicular mobility with the aim to reveal the underlying patterns and uncover the human strategies determining them. To this end we analyze a large dataset of GPS vehicles tracks collected in the Rome (Italy) district during a month. We demonstrate the existence of a local optimization of travel times that vehicle drivers perform while choosing their journey. This finding is mirrored by two additional important facts, i.e., the observation that the average vehicle velocity increases by increasing the travel length and the emergence of a universal scaling law for the distribution of travel times at fixed traveled length. A simple modeling scheme confirms this scenario opening the way to further predictions.