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Slums are a structural feature of urbanization, and shifting urbanization trends underline their significance for the cities of tomorrow. Despite their importance, data and knowledge on slums are very limited. In consideration of the current data landscape, it is not possible to answer one of the most essential questions: Where are slums located? The goal of this study is to provide a more nuanced understanding of the geography of slums and their growth trajectories. The methods rely on the combination of different datasets (city-level slum maps, world cities, global human settlements layer, Atlas of Informality). Slum data from city-level maps form the backbone of this research and are made compatible by differentiating between the municipal area, the urbanized area, and the area beyond. This study quantifies the location of slums in 30 cities, and our findings show that only half of all slums are located within the administrative borders of cities. Spatial growth has also shifted outwards. However, this phenomenon is very different in different regions of the world; the municipality captures less than half of all slums in Africa and the Middle East but almost two-thirds of all slums in cities of South Asia. These insights are used to estimate land requirements within the Sustainable Development Goals time frame. In 2015, almost one billion slum residents occupied a land area as large as twice the size of the country of Portugal. The estimated 380 million residents to be added up to 2030 will need land equivalent to the size of the country of Egypt. This land will be added to cities mainly outside their administrative borders. Insights are provided on how this land demand differs within cities and between world regions. Such novel insights are highly relevant to the policy actions needed to achieve Target 11.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (“by 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services, and upgrade slums”) as interventions targeted at slums or informal settlements are strongly linked to political and administrative boundaries. More research is needed to draw attention to the urban expansion of cities and the role of slums and informal settlements.

Remote sensing is commonly performed via airborne platforms such as satellites, specialized aircraft, and unmanned aerial systems (UASs), which perform airborne photography using mounted cameras. However, they are limited by their coverage (UASs), irregular flyover frequency (aircraft), and/or low spatial resolution (satellites) due to their high altitude. In this paper, we examine the utilization of commercial flights as an airborne platform for remote sensing. Namely, we simulate a situation where all aircraft on commercial flights are equipped with a mounted camera used for airborne photography. The simulation is used to estimate coverage, the temporal and spatial resolution of aerial imagery acquired this way, as well as the storage capacity required for storing all imagery data. The results show that Europe is 83.28 percent covered with an average of one aerial photography every half an hour and a ground sampling distance of 0.96 meters per pixel. Capturing such imagery results in 20 million images or four petabytes of image data per day. More detailed results are given in the paper for separate countries/territories in Europe, individual commercial airlines and alliances, as well as three different cameras.

Ecotone – an area where two environments of different composition and structure meet due to land conversion – is prone to habitat loss and biodiversity devaluation as a result of fragmentation. Responsive to change, birds represent one of the common animals of all habitat types since their diversity and abundance are able to reflect ecological tendencies in different biodiversity. This study was aimed to analyze the diversity, abundance, and evenness of birds as well as determine their density and frequency in the ecotone area of Sutan Syarif Hasyim Forest Park, Riau, Indonesia. Six sections of the study area (natural forest-and-shrubbery, natural forest-and-palm oil plantation, natural forest-and-lake, shrubbery-and-palm oil plantation, shrubbery-and-lake, and palm oil plantation-and-lake) were observed by employing Line Intercept Transect. 1 182 individuals of 59 bird species were reported, with Pycnonotusaurigaster (Vieillot, 1818) as the dominant one. The total diversity index of 3.75, abundance 8.2 and evenness 0.92 were evident to high density and frequency of birds in the area.

This study examines the statewide service coverage of emergency medical services (EMS) in view of public health planners, policy makers, and ambulance service managers. The study investigates the statewide service coverage in a mixed region of urban, rural, and frontier regions to address the importance of ambulance service coverage at a large scale. The study incorporated statewide road networks for ambulance travel time, census blocks for population, and backup service coverage using geographic information systems (GIS). The catchment areas were delineated by the travel time after subtracting chute time for each Census Block as an analysis zone. Using the catchment areas from the ambulance base to the centroid of Census Block, the population and land coverage were calculated. The service shortage and multiple coverage areas were identified by the catchment areas. The study found that both reducing chute time and increasing the speed of emergency vehicles at the same time was significantly more effective than improving only one of two factors. The study shows that the service is improved significantly in frontier and urban areas by increasing driving time and chute time. However, in rural areas, the improvement is marginal owing to wider distribution than urban areas and shorter threshold response time than frontier areas. The public health planners and EMS managers benefit from the study to identify underserved areas and redistribute limited public resources.

Agri‐photovoltaics (agri‐PV) offer a promising synergy between renewable energy generation and agricultural productivity, enabling dual land use to address growing food and energy demands. This review presents a comprehensive synthesis of recent developments in agri‐PV technologies, with a particular focus on structural design typologies (e.g., overhead, vertical, dynamic tracking systems), land‐use efficiency indicators (e.g., land equivalent ratio and ground coverage ratio), and climate–crop–PV interactions. Critical technoeconomic parameters such as the levelized cost of electricity and levelized cost of agrivoltaics are emphasized, highlighting their role in assessing financial viability. Through global case studies—including the co‐ownership revenue‐sharing model—it is explored how agri‐PV systems can be economically viable for both PV developers and farmers. In addition, the article examines underrepresented dimensions such as impacts on biodiversity, long‐term soil health, and ecosystem resilience. Persistent barriers such as public acceptance, policy inconsistencies, and the absence of universal design standards are also discussed. By identifying existing knowledge gaps and emerging opportunities, this review aims to guide interdisciplinary collaboration toward the development of sustainable, scalable, and ecologically sensitive agri‐PV systems worldwide. This articles reviews the recent prospects of agri‐photovoltaics (agri‐PV) across continents. The existing standards and pilot projects to standardize new codes and regulations are discussed. The state‐of‐the‐art agri‐PV scheme's benefits and lackings are presented. Community acceptance and policy barriers are also discussed where prospective solutions presented in the literature are organized.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the importance of affordable and clean energy sources. Solar energy is a perfect example, being both renewable and abundant. Its popularity shows no signs of slowing down, with solar photovoltaic (PV) panels being the primary technology for converting sunlight into electricity. Advancements are continuously being made to ensure cost-effectiveness, high-performing cells, extended lifespans, and minimal maintenance requirements. This study focuses on identifying suitable locations for implementing solar PV systems at the University Malaysia Pahang Al Sultan Abdullah (UMPSA), Pekan campus including buildings, water bodies, and forest areas. A combined technical and economic analysis is conducted using Helioscope for simulations and the Photovoltaic Geographic Information System (PVGIS) for economic considerations. Helioscope simulation examine case studies for PV installations in forested areas, lakes, and buildings. This approach provides comprehensive estimations of solar photovoltaic potential, annual cost savings, electricity costs, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. Based on land coverage percentages, Floatovoltaics have a large solar PV capacity of 32.3 Megawatts (MW); forest-based photovoltaics (Forestvoltaics) achieve maximum yearly savings of RM 37,268,550; and Building Applied Photovoltaics (BAPV) have the lowest CO emissions and net carbon dioxide reduction compared to other plant sizes. It also clarifies the purpose of using both software tools to achieve a comprehensive understanding of both technical and economic aspects.

Pakistan has a unique landscape geographically due to its strategic geo-political importance. It has played a vital role in global climate and politics. There are various semantic segmentation studies performed on remote sensing high-resolution imagery of various urban and rural areas into major classes of buildings, vegetation, water, and roads. These analyses have supported the land coverage study, which can facilitate urban infrastructure management, forestry, disaster management, and climate challenges. Recent climate reports have confirmed the importance of these studies, especially for Pakistan. It’s a critical location for the global south to observe the climate catastrophe. This research will focus on three major cities of Islamabad, Karachi, and Quetta and semantically segment the satellite imagery to study the land coverage. Our research contributes the dataset from major cities of Pakistan and compare the performance of state-of-the-art semantic segmentation networks to evaluate the dataset. Benchmark can help in selecting a highly effective deep learning network and generalizing those networks on our prepared dataset. Dataset can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/Abdullah-Sabir/Pakistan-Land-Coverage-Analysis-Dataset

This paper analyzes the PM10 concentrations and influences of atmospheric condition (AC) and land coverage (LC) on a high-pollution megacity (Bogota, Colombia) from a public health viewpoint. Information of monitoring stations equipped with measuring devices for PM10/temperature/solar-radiation/wind-speed were used. The research period lasted eight years (2007–2014). AC and LC were determined after comparing daily PM10 concentrations (DPM10) to reference limits published by the World Health Organization (WHO). ARIMA models for DPM10 were also developed. The results indicated that urban sectors with lower atmospheric instability (AI) had a 2.85% increase in daily mortality (DM) in relation to sectors with greater AI. In these sectors of lower AI, impervious LC predominated, instead of vegetated LC. An ARIMA analysis revealed that a greater extent of impervious LC around a station led to a greater effect on previous days’ DPM10 concentrations. Extreme PM10 episodes persisted for up to two days. Extreme pollution episodes were probably also preceded by low mixing-layer heights (between 722–1085 m). The findings showed a 13.0% increase in WHO standard excesses (PE) for each 10 µg/m3 increase in DPM10, and a 0.313% increase in DM for each 10% increase in PE. The observed average reduction of 14.8% in DPM10 (−0.79% in DM) was probably due to 40% restriction of the traffic at peak hours.

Our study aimed to analyze the effects of land use coverage (agricultural, cattle breeding, natural vegetation, and others) on the concentration and chemical characteristics of DOM in Pampean streams. We selected 41 streams situated in the Buenos Aires Province, Argentina in autumn, spring, and summer. In each stream, we determined DOC concentration and adopted a spectroscopic approach to characterize DOM optical qualitative properties. Agricultural land use coverage was predominant in all the sampled streams. Our results showed that DOC ranged from ~ 3 to 26 mg L−1, higher DOC concentrations were found in streams from Salado River and its tributaries. The variation in DOM properties was related to land use coverage and season. According to that, we found similar DOM optical properties during summer due to extremely high precipitation during the sampling period, suggesting higher hydrological connectivity between catchments and streams. The Pampean region is undergoing an agricultural intensification that affects the riparian zone of streams. This is the first study, which assesses the changes in DOM optical features concerning land use coverage in streams located in the Pampean region.

Landscape alterations and ecosystem services (ES) are crucial elements that affect the socio-ecological development of ecologically fragile regions. To provide scientific support for the land-use planning and regional ecological restoration to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the Loess Plateau from 1992 to 2015, this study proposes an integrated assessment framework for assessing the supply - demand match and equilibrium of ES combining potential relationships between landscape alterations, ES, and sustainable development at the county and regional scales. Results show that more than 85% of local counties have a supply - demand mismatch in terms of ecosystem services. Supply - demand distributions for provisioning and supporting services were relatively balanced compared to cultural services, which were imbalanced. Although the overall supply - demand relationship is relatively balanced because of the significant influence of ecological restoration, it shows an increasing trend toward imbalance as human - land conflict is prominent in some regions. SDGs emphasize on specific ES information such as ecosystem conservation, sustainable agriculture, and urban construction. Furtherly, positive impacts from landscape dynamics can improve the supply capacity of the ES and contribute to regional sustainability.