Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change analyses are useful in understanding the changes in our living environments and their driving factors. Modeling changes of LULC in the future, together with the driving factors derived through analyzing the trends of past LULC changes, bring the opportunity to assess and orientate the current and future land-use policies. As the entryway of Quang Ninh province, Vietnam, Dong Trieu locale has experienced significant LULC changes during the past two decades. In this study, the spatial distribution of six Level I LULC classes, forest, cropland, orchards, waterbody, built-up, and barren land, in Dong Trieu district at 2000, 2010, and 2019 were obtained from Landsat imageries by maximum likelihood technique. The most significant changes observed over the past twenty years are a decrease of barren land (9.1%) and increases of built-up (8.1%) and orchards (6.8%). Driving factor analysis indicated that the changes of cropland and built-up were dependent on distance from road (DFR), distance from main road (DFMR), distance from urban (DFU), distance from water (DFW), elevation, slope, and population density. The changes of forest were dependent on all the driving forces listed above, except DFMR. The orchards mainly appeared near the high-population-density area. The transformation of the waterbody was affected by geography (elevation and slope) and population density. The higher the population density, the less barren the land would appear.

The soil properties, climate, type of management, and fermentation process critically affect the productivity and quality of tea. In this study, tender tea leaves were collected from central Taiwan, and organic components in their infusions as well as physical and chemical soil properties differentiated using aerial photographs where good (G) and bad (B) growth exhibitions were determined. Eleven physical and chemical soil properties as well as five compounds in tea infusions were analyzed to determine the main factor that affects the growth of these tea trees. The Fleiss’ kappa statistic results revealed that the wet aggregate stability, pH, and exchangeable potassium content exhibit the most significant effect, with scores of 0.86, 0.64, and 0.62, respectively. Soil quality calculated using the mean weight diameter based on 11 soil properties revealed that ~67% of the total score of G is greater than that of B. Generally, contents of total polyphenols (51.67%) and catechins (51.76%) in the infusions of B were greater than those of G. In addition, significant positive correlations between the free amino acids content and soil properties, including pH and copper content, were observed. However, a negative correlation between the free amino acids and flavone contents and most of the soil properties was observed. The survey data set obtained from this study can provide useful information for the improved management of tea plantations.