Exposure to human influence – a geographical field approximating intensity of human influence on landscape structure

A new spatial variable for the land use and land cover change modelling is introduced, approximating the intensity of human influence on the landscape. The ‘exposure’ simulates the dilution of human activity from settlements (source points with information about population size or other human activity quantification) to landscape, based on the accessibility. Exposure to a settlement is directly proportional to its population size and inversely proportional to the cost distance from the settlement. Cost distance uses the sine of the slope angle as a cost raster to simulate a barrier effect of the terrain. Overall exposure to human influence summates exposure to all individual settlements in a region. The resultant raster field created for Slovakia achieves observable resemblance to the actual intensity of land use derived from Corine Land Cover map. The ArcGIS tool developed for the exposure calculation is supplemented.

本研究引入了一种用于土地利用与土地覆盖变化建模的新型空间变量，用以近似表征人类对景观的影响强度。该“暴露度（exposure）”基于可达性原理，模拟人类活动从居民点（即以人口规模或其他人类活动量化指标为信息的源点）向景观的扩散稀释过程。居民点的暴露度与其人口规模呈正比，与从该居民点出发的成本距离呈反比。成本距离以坡度角的正弦值作为成本栅格，以模拟地形的阻隔效应。区域内的总人类影响暴露度为该区域内所有单个居民点暴露度的累加总和。为斯洛伐克生成的最终栅格场，与源自Corine土地覆盖（Corine Land Cover）地图的实际土地利用强度具有可观测的相似性。本研究还补充了用于该暴露度计算的ArcGIS工具。