Xiyong Hou

• Chinese Academy of Sciences

The coastal wetlands of the Yellow River Delta (YRD) in China are crucial for their valuable resources, environmental significance, and economic contributions. However, these wetlands are also vulnerable to the dual threats of climate change and human disturbances. Despite substantial attention to the historical shifts in YRD’s coastal wetlands, un...

A large number of artificial wetlands have replaced natural wetlands along waterbird migration routes to supply breeding, resting and feeding grounds for waterbirds. Effective identification of potential artificial wetlands that could serve as suitable habitats for waterbirds can provide important reference for field investigation and waterbird con...

Fractal dimension is a fundamental index used to describe the complexity of coastlines.However, the traditional method of calculating divider dimensions using hand-drawn circles is no longer suitable for studying coastlines at large spatial scales due to its limited accuracy and lack of convenience in the current information age.Therefore, this pap...

Oil wells， wind turbines， and roads are the main artificial features in the Yellow River Delta （YRD）. It is of great significance to clarify their spatio-temporal characteristics to ensure the ecological security of the YRD. Based on medium and high-resolution satellite images， such as Landsat， SPOT， and GF2， the main artificial features in the YRD...

Based on Landsat images, the spatial information of major gulfs along the coast of China in 2010, 2015, and 2020 were extracted to explore the morphological change characteristics. Some evaluation indexes, such as shoreline utilization degree, gulf area, gulf shape index, and gulf centroid, were used to analyze the gulfs' spatio-temporal change fea...

Facing the western Pacific Ocean and backed by the Eurasian continent, the coastal area of China (hereafter as CAC) is sensitive and vulnerable to climate change due to the compound effects of land-ocean-atmosphere, and thus is prone to suffer huge climate-related disaster losses because of its large population density and fast developed economy in...

Understanding the home range of animal species can be helpful to biodiversity and habitat conservation. Saunders’s Gull (Larus saundersi), one of the vulnerable birds in the world, has become an important indicator species to measure the quality of ecological environment in the coastal wetlands of the Yellow River Delta. Information about habitat s...

Wetlands provide ecosystem services for regional development, and, thus, have considerable economic value. In this study, a combination of evaluation methods was carried out to evaluate the wetland ecosystem services provided by national nature reserves in 11 coastal provinces/municipalities in China. We constructed a literature database containing...

High-precision land use/land cover classification mapping derived from remote sensing supplies essential datasets for scientific research on environmental assessment, climate change simulation, geographic condition monitoring, and environmental management at global and regional scales. It is an important issue in the study of earth system science,...

Tidal flats throughout the Yellow and Bohai Seas provide essential habitat for migrating shorebirds along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Land reclamation threatens this habitat. Using bird-sighting data and environmental variables, we identify areas appropriate for prioritized protection for 46 shorebird species, using a MaxEnt species distrib...

The coastal zone is a sensitive region affected by both human activities and climate change. The shoreline is a crucial component of coastal zones. Shoreline monitoring research has a vital role in managing and protecting coastal ecosystems and communities. This study focuses on measurements of morphological change in the Yellow River channel and t...

In this paper, we used the Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) third-generation Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) (GIMMS NDVI3g) dataset. Based on GIMMS NDVI3g data over the global coastal zone from 1982 to 2014, the spatial–temporal characteristics of vegetation coverage were analysed by plotting the spatial pattern...

The population of shorebirds in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway (EAAF) has severely declined over the past several decades. One reason for this condition is low survival in stopover sites in the Yellow Sea Ecoregion (YSE) due to habitat degradation. Here, we focused on shorebird habitat quality in the Yellow River Delta (YRD), which is a represe...

Land–sea ecological connectivity refers to the interaction (convenience or hindrance) of certain physical, chemical and biological processes between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Research on land–sea ecological connectivity can provide important scientific bases for the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems in terrestrial...

The expanding economical activities have accelerated losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services, which are especially pronounced in Asia. To find solutions to stop these losses, a group of scientists studying both ecological and social sciences has launched an interdisciplinary research network, entitled TSUNAGARI (Trans-System, UNified Approach...

Coastal area of China (CAC) is of high ecological vulnerability and extremely sensitive to global climate change. Based on daily precipitation dataset of 156 station records, spatial and temporal variations of extreme precipitation events from 1961 to 2014 in the coastal area of China were investigated using a set of mathematical and statistical me...

Based on the daily temperature dataset of 156 weather station records, a set of statistical methods, including trend analysis, Wavelet analysis, Mann-Kendall test, accumulative anomaly analysis, Pettitt test, and principal component analysis was employed to investigate the spatial and temporal variations of the extreme temperature events from 1961...

Quantification of net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE) between the atmosphere and vegetation is of great importance for regional and global studies of carbon balance. The eddy covariance technique can quantify carbon budgets and the effects of environmental controls for many forest types across the continent but it only provides integrated CO2 flux...

Gross domestic product (GDP) reflects a nation or region’s economic growth as a whole, and is the sum of product in the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the economy in the area. However, statistical GDP data is problematic in integrated application with geographical data. The GDP spatialization data, which shows the GDP in grid cells and...

Many waterbird species, in particularly migratory shorebirds, on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway depend on the intertidal areas of coastal China. In recent years, these habitats have suffered severe shrinkage as a result of wetland loss and degradation. Identifying critical areas for waterbirds and assessing conservation status has become an urg...

The impact of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) construction on land use change has attracted worldwide concern. However, quantitative evidence is lacking for the drivers of land use change resulting from the TGR during and after construction. We used the Pengxi River basin, located upstream of the Three Gorges dam, to evaluate the effects of large-...

Based on multi-temporal topographic maps, remote sensing images and field surveys covering the entire coastal zone of mainland China, the coastlines of six periods since the early 1940s were extracted. Coastline changes over the last 70 years were then analyzed in terms of coastline structure, coastline fractals, coastline change rates, land-sea pa...

Through index-based method, the coastal economic vulnerability of Bohai Rim in China to the hypothetical local scenario of 1-m relative sea level rise by the end of twenty-first century was assessed (note that 1-m global sea level rise throughout the twenty-first century is highly improbable). Both physical and socioeconomic variables were consider...

Impacted by climate changes and human activities, the coastal zone of China has undergone various dramatic changes, among which, shape change of major gulfs (including bays and estuaries) is one of the most important aspects. In this paper, spatial dataset of gulf shoreline and gulf shape in seven phases since the early 1940s was delineated based o...

This study assessed the performance of recently released 3 arc second SRTM DEM version 4.1 by CSI-CGIAR and 1 arc second ASTER GDEM version 1 and version 2 by METI-NASA in comparison with ground control points from 1:50000 digital line graphs for the coastal zone of Shandong Province, Easter China. The vertical accuracy of SRTM DEM is 13.74 m root...

Sandy beaches of the eastern coast zone in Eastern Laizhou Bay represent the most popular tourist, recreational destinations and constitute some of the most valuable restates in China. This paper presents the detection of shoreline changes in Laizhou Bay East Bank using an automatic histogram thresholding algorithm on the basis of multi-temporal La...

Shandong province is located in the northern part of China and tends to be a drought-prone region. This study is dedicated to making a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the spatial patterns of drought frequency and its climate trend coefficient, drought grades, and temporal characteristics of drought coverage area, drought duration, and dr...

Markov chain is one of the most widely used methods for land use change forecasting, however, it’s a non-spatial model and few papers have discussed the effects of time-duration on its performance. In this paper, we first present the primary methodologies of the Spatial-Markov model, which endows the ordinary Markov chain with spatial dimension usi...

Efforts to reduce land-based non-point source (NPS) pollutions from watersheds to coastal waters are ongoing all around the world. In this study, annual yield of NPS nitrogen (NPS-N) pollution in Jiaodong Peninsula, China from 1979 to 2008 was estimated. The results showed that: from 1979 to 2008, NPS-N yields exhibited significant inter-annual var...

Based on remote sensing and GIS techniques, land use maps in 2000, 2005 and 2010 in China' s coastal zone were produced, and structural raster data of land use were further generated to calculate land use intensity comprehensive index (LUICI) for analyzing land use spatial-temporal characteristics at 1 km scale. Results show that: 1) from the persp...

Coastal wetland shoreline change represents one of the most important land-ocean interaction processes in complex and dynamic coastal environment. This paper presents the detecting of shoreline changes in four typical coastal wetlands of ecological importance along Bohai rim based on multi-temporal shorelines extracted from obtained Normalized Diff...

Long-term spatial–temporal dynamics of vegetation coverage is a key problem of issues include global climate change study, regional ecological process monitoring and ecosystem management. Based on SPOT-VGT 10-day composite data over the Circum Bohai Bay Region from 1999 to 2009, this paper performs the Mann–Kendall test and calculates the trend Slo...

This study examined topographic influence on spatial and temporal variability in the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from the Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre-Vegetation at the regional and landscape scales in the Jiaodong Peninsula. The generalized additive models were used to quantify the spatial variation of NDVI at...

The importance of accurately mapping and monitoring land cover changes over time is increasing, especially in rapidly growing coastal cities. In this study, three pairs of Landsat images of Yantai, a representative coastal city in China, from 1989, 1999, and 2009 were selected to monitor land cover changes and urban sprawl dynamics. To improve the...

Annual normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration are the most important large-scale indicators of terrestrial and oceanic ecosystem net primary productivity. In this paper, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor level 3 standard mapped image annual products from 1998 to 2009 are used to study the spati...

As one of the eighteen field-specific reports comprising the comprehensive scope of the strategic general report of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, this sub-report addresses long-range planning for developing science and technology in the field of water science. They each craft a roadmap for their sphere of development to 2050. In their entirety,...

More detailed description for the development of “science and technology system for water” is needed in order to increase the operability and flexibility of “Thematic Roadmaps to 2050 for China’s Water Science & Technology Development”. Based on the analysis and illustration of the future country need, development goals, main science and technology...

The knowledge of water cycle process is the basis for water science & technology development. “Water” being of multiple properties and functions with regard to environment, ecology, economy, society, and culture, etc. has surpassed any other natural resources in supporting socio-economic development and maintaining eco-system integrity and biodiver...

Predicting the trend of precipitation is a difficult task in meteorology and environmental sciences. Statistical approaches from time series analysis provide an alternative way for precipitation prediction. The ARIMA model incorporating seasonal characteristics, which is referred to as seasonal ARIMA model was presented. The time series data is the...

The protection, development, and utilization of water resource have been an important dimension of the socio-economic sustainable development. Historically China had been called a “water controlling society”. However, since the middle of 20th century China has been perplexed by a variety of water issues. “Too much water (flood and water logging), t...

The water scientific and technological research both at present and in the future must address the above-mentioned, unprecedented, complex, diversified and comprehensive water issues. The roadmap for water science & technology development is put forward at macro level, based on the current reality and future prospective, in order to guide and promo...

China’s water issue featured by water resource shortage, water pollution expansion, water ecology degradation, water disaster worsening, and outdated water management will not only be there for a long period of time but also be increasingly severe. Water issues are of obvious uncertainty due to the global environmental change, constituting a great...

Non-Point Source (NPS) pollution in coastal zone are of increasing concern among water environment managers and planners worldwide. In this paper, the long-term impacts of land use change on temporal-spatial variations of runoff, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) in Dagujia River watershed was studied by jointly using hydrological analy...

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) is one of the most important issues of Global Change studies, it can help us understand the pace, magnitude and spatial reaches of human alterations of the earth's land surface. In this paper, we analyzed the spatial patterns of land use change in Jiaodong Peninsula. Land use transition matrix, land use dynamic...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important variable for water and energy balances on the earth's surface. Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) is an image-processing model that calculates ET over vast areas. In this study, time series of MODIS data in 2009 and meteorological data are used to estimate ET over the Yellow River Delta (YRD) b...

The assessment of sustainable development is a challenging task as its measuring is rather complex without a mature framework. In this paper, as a case study, a coastal city of China-Yantai was assessed for sustainable development in the period from 1998 to 2007. We used a methodological framework based on 36 indicators and three composite indices...

Impervious surfaces as a special factor mainly made by human not only can indicate changes of LUCC and the Urbanization, and is also a good indicator of environmental quality. In this paper, we took the TM image data of the Yellow River Delta (YRD) region especially the Dongying city in 2009 as study area, used the Normalized Mixing Spectral Analys...

The role of remote sensing in phenological studies is increasingly regarded as a key to understand large area seasonal phenomena. This paper describes the application of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time series data for forest phenological patterns. The forest phenological phase of Northeast China (NE China) and its spatial...

Loess Plateau is a unique region in the world where the human activities are very intensive and the eco-environment is highly frangible. During the past two decades, the Land Use/Cover Change has been considered as one of the most important reasons for the eco-environment degeneration in Loess Plateau. In this paper, land use data in 1990, 1995 and...

The distribution and phenologies of vegetation are largely associated with climate, terrain characteristics and human activities. Satellite data provide an opportunity to map vegetation and monitor its dynamics continuously. This paper describes the application of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time series data for forest cla...

The forest fire during May 6-June 4, 1987 in Daxinganling of Northeastern China has changed greatly the forest structure and forest biomass. The post-fire forest cover types and forest biomass change are related to different fire disturbance levels. In this article, multi-temporal Landsat TM images and forest inventory data are used to estimate the...

Vegetation phenology is an important variable in a wide variety of Earth and atmospheric science applications. The role of remote sensing in phenological studies is increasingly regarded as a key to understanding large area seasonal phenomena. This paper describes the application of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time series...