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Developing a method for assessing environmental sustainability based on the Google Earth Engine platform

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Abstract

Environmental sustainability is the foundation and of great significance for the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration as an example, we developed a method to effectively assess long-term regional environmental sustainability based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. We used the GEE to obtain 5206 Landsat remote sensing images in the region from 1983 to 2016 and developed the comprehensive environmental index (CEI) to assess regional environmental sustainability based on the theme-oriented framework proposed by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. We found that the environmental sustainability of the urban agglomeration showed a trend of first rising, then falling, and then rising again in the past 30 years. The average CEI increased from 0.621 to 0.631 from 1985 to 1990, dropped to the lowest value of 0.618 in 2000, and then rose to the highest value of 0.672 in 2015. In particular, the extent of areas in which environmental sustainability improved (56% of the region) was greater than the extent of areas in which environmental deterioration occurred. The environmental sustainability of Hengshui, Xingtai, and Cangzhou in the southeast of the region has been significantly improved. The method proposed in this study provides an automatic, rapid, and extensible way to assess regional environmental sustainability and provides a scientific reference for improving the sustainability of the regional environment.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the sensitive nature of the raw data but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their insightful and critical comments, which have improved the quality of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41971225), the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Fund (Grant No. 8192027), and the Beijing Normal University Tang Scholar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Haidian District, Xinjiekouwai Street No. 19, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Xianwang Xia, Chentai Jiao, Ling Zhang, Xingyun Feng & Qingxu Huang

  2. School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Xiasha Higher Education Zone, 928 Second Avenue, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Shixiong Song

  3. Zhejiang Academy of Eco-Civilization, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Shixiong Song

  4. School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Ling Zhang & Qingxu Huang

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  1. Xianwang Xia
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  2. Chentai Jiao
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  3. Shixiong Song
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  4. Ling Zhang
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  6. Qingxu Huang
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Contributions

Xianwang Xia: data processing and analysis, writing—original draft preparation, and visualization.

Chentai Jiao: data processing and analysis.

Shixiong Song: data processing and analysis, conceptualization, and methodology.

Ling Zhang: writing—review and editing, and methodology.

Xingyun Feng: writing—review and editing.

Qingxu Huang: conceptualization, supervision, and writing—review and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qingxu Huang.

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Xia, X., Jiao, C., Song, S. et al. Developing a method for assessing environmental sustainability based on the Google Earth Engine platform. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 57437–57452 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19773-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19773-z

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