The influence of climate and human factors on a regional heat island in the Zhengzhou metropolitan area, China.

The development of urbanization and the establishment of metropolitan areas causes the urban heat island to cross the original single-city scale and form a regional heat island (RHI) with a larger influence range. Due to the decreasing distance between cities, there is an urgent need to reevaluate RHI for urban agglomerations, considering all cities instead of a conventional single-city perspective. The impact of climatic conditions and human factors on heat islands still lacks a general method and framework for systematic evaluation.

Temporal variation and spatial scale dependency of the trade-offs and synergies among multiple ecosystem services in the Taihu Lake Basin of China.

Grasping the temporal-spatial characteristics of interactions and spatial scales of multiple ecosystem services is the foundation for sustainable ecosystem management. Eight ecosystem services, including crop production, freshwater supply, aquatic production, net primary production, soil conservation, water retention, flood regulation, and forest recreation were measured at the 1-km pixel scale in the Taihu Lake Basin (TLB) of China from 1990 to 2010. Furthermore, we quantified the trade-offs and synergies of services at different periods of urbanization and across the 1-km pixel scale and the county scale.