Heliyon (Feb 2024)
Influence of industrial sustainability transition on air quality in a typical resource-exhausted city
Abstract
The industrial transition of resource-exhausted cities is the focus of attention, and air quality has naturally become an important indicator to measure the sustainable development quality. Aerosol optical depth (AOD) is an important parameter to indicate air quality. This paper aimed to study the influence of industrial transition on air quality and provide a list of recommendations and management strategies for sustainable development in resource-exhausted cities. Results showed the secondary industry played important roles for economic development before 2015, however, it decreased after 2014, and the tertiary industry played more and more important roles from 2015. Analyses of the spatial distribution of AOD in each year showed that AOD was relatively higher in urban areas with concentrated population, and the threshold range of AOD value with high area ratio in spatial distribution decreased gradually, which was consistent with the analysis results of time series. Results of correlation analyses indicated that air temperature and land surface temperature were the main natural meteorological factors influencing AOD. Gross population, SO2 emission and the cultivated land area were the main socio-economic factors influencing AOD. It could be concluded that the industrial transition of the city has achieved good results, the economic structure has been gradually optimized and adjusted, and the air quality has gradually improved over industrial sustainability transition. Scientific exploitation, energy conservation, application of clean energy and industrial structure optimization would be effective measures for sustainable development.
