Based on the research and analysis about the characteristics and the law of evolution of CO2 emission in the past 16 years (1995—2010) in China's eight regions, using the method of LMDI decomposition, the effects of China's CO2 emission was decomposed into four influencing effects, which were population size effect, economic development effects, energy intensity effect and energy structure effect, the reason why China's CO2 emission showing regional differences was found. The results show that: 1) the amount of carbon emissions and per capita carbon emissions of eight regions showed an upward trend in the past 16 years. 2) The proportion of carbon emissions in the regions of Northeast China, Beijing and Tianjin as well as the eastern coastal zone showed a declining trend, other regions were showing an opposite trending or remaining unchanged. 3) Economic development effects have the strongest positive impact on carbon emissions, energy intensity effect has the strongest negative effect on carbon emissions. And 4) population size effect has a greater positive impact on the growth of CO2 emission in regions including municipalities, economic development effects have a weaker positive impact on the growth of CO2 emission in developed regions than other regions, energy intensity effect has an inhibition impact to the regions having an active economic restructuring, energy structure effect was affected by macroeconomic and national energy policy, which has a big fluctuation impact on carbon emissions.
In the context of global warming, as an industrial province, Shandong possesses the top most total amount of carbon emissions in the country. Therefore, how to control and reduce carbon emissions by transfer the mode and adjust the structure has been the increasingly urgent major issue in Shandong Province. LMDI decomposition method was used for quantitative analysis of the effect of adjustment of industrial structure on 1994-2010 carbon emissions in Shandong Province. On this basis, contribution of adjustment of the structure on carbon emissions before 2030 was predicted combined with LEAP model. There were three conclusions. Firstly, economic growth was the main cause of increasing water pollutant emissions; changes of industrial structure drove in the growth of pollutants emissions, but not the most important factor; technical efficiency was the main reason for reducing pollutants emissions. Industrial structure effect was 3.5139 million tons of standard coal from 1994 to 2010; the contribution to the growth of carbon emissions was 3.91%. Secondly, CO2 emissions has a certain relationship with the variety of industrial proportion, the proportion of industry increased or decreased one percent, then CO2 emissions will increase or reduce 786-837 thousand tons of standard coal. Lastly, in the baseline scenario and low-carbon scenarios, the rate of contribution to the growth of the industrial structure adjustment will be about -5.3% and -10.4% respectively. This shows that the adjustment of the industrial structure will reduce carbon emissions, which is contrary to the situation that the changes in the industrial structure increased carbon emissions.
A field survey with a sample of 98 households was carried out in Chaganbulige, Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia in order to understand herdsmen's perception of climate change and compare it with meteorological data and the official record of extreme climate events. The results showed that most herdsmen correctly perceived the change in temperature, but they had inexact judgement on precipitation, wind and sandstorm. In the past 40 years, temperature in Siziwang Banner was slowly increasing. The precipitation and storms were fluctuating greatly, but the long-term trend did not change much though most herdsmen reported that the rainfall was significantly decreasing. Recent years of extreme climate events impressed herdsmen most.
As to the impacts of extreme climate events, drought was most impressive to herders followed by snowstorms and sandstorms. For adapting to climate change herdsmen had spontaneously taken various adaptive measures, of which 22 adaptation measures were reported in the survey. The top five measures that were used by most herdsmen are storing more hay and forage, reducing the herd size, building warm shed, borrowing money (loan), and "not let next generations be herders". Others include building corral, digging well, planting fodder, cooperation in vaccinations of cattle, reducing household expenditures, changing grazing location, renting grassland, introducing new breeds, savings, wage labor, giving up herding, alternative livelihoods (e.g. tourism), sharing herding arrangement, etc.
The 22 spontaneous adaptation measures were assessed by experts with the method of multiple criteria analysis (MCA). The criteria include effectiveness, economic benefits, flexibility, no-regret, side-effect, compliance with government policies and plans, compatibility with development goals, and replicability. The results showed that building warm shed, the introduction of new breeds, hay and forage storage, reducing the herd size and wage labor met the most criteria.
The spontaneous adaptation measures were further screened by herdsmen, researchers, and local government officials with the participatory method. The results showed that measures such as building warm shed, introduction of new breeds, hay and forage storage, reducing the herd size and loan were more effective than others, which did not totally coincide with the results of expert assessment.
To support the spontaneous adaptation measures which were selected to be most practical and effective, the herders identified the following policies that were mostly needed, i.e. loan support, the improvement of social security, accurate weather forecasts and pest forecasts, animal insurance, training, market access enhancement, enhancement of infrastructure, warm shed subsidies and drinking water project. Those policies would improve herdsmen's ability of adapting to climate change, help herdsmen to cope with extreme climate events, and reduce their vulnerability of livelihoods.
Since the 1978 reform and opening up of China, the level of urbanization has increased rapidly. Rapid urban expansion and restructuring have had significant impacts on the ecological environment especially within built-up areas. This study used ArcGIS 10, ENVI 4.5, Visual FoxPro 6.0, and Python software to analyze vegetation changes, and the impact of human factors on vegetation in the built-up areas of 656 Chinese cities from 1992 to 2010. The data mainly include DMSP/OLS nighttime light data and vegetation data. Firstly, an existing algorithm for extracting urban areas based on statistical data was refined to extract the boundaries of built-up areas. Secondly, we selected the mean Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of a built-up area to represent absolute vegetation, and mean NDVI can reflect vegetation cover and vegetation biomass in the built-up area. We constructed a mathematical model (ratio of mean NDVI in a built-up area to a background region, RMNDVI) to measure the impact of human factors on vegetation. RMNDVI values greater than 1 indicate relatively beneficial effects, and RMNDVI values less than 1 indicate proportionally adverse effects. The results clearly indicated three aspects of vegetation changes and human influence in built-up areas during rapid urbanization: the size of cities (metropolises, large cities, medium-sized cities, and small cities), administrative divisions of China (provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities) and vegetation zones (humid and semi-humid forest zone, semi-arid steppe zone, and arid desert zone). Finally, we discussed the mechanism of human factors on vegetation changes in built-up areas. The findings provide a scientific basis for municipal planning departments and a decision-making reference for government, and also provide scientific guidance for sustainable development in China.
Based on the data collection and analysis of the industry, agriculture, environmental protection, natural conditions and population statistics in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in 2000, 2005 and 2010, respectively, the nitrogen budgets and its regional differences in the PRD during the past decade were assessed. The results indicate that the nitrogen inputs and outputs of the PRD varied slightly during the last ten years, whereas the nitrogen surplus increased continuously. The nitrogen surplus in per unit area increased from 43.43 kg/(hm2·a) in 2000 to 51.92 kg/(hm2·a) in 2010. The nitrogen inputs in per unit area of the PRD are much higher than the average level over the whole country, but it is still a bit lower than that of the Yangtze River Delta. In addition, the rapid development of urbanization and increasing human activities show strong influences on the evolution of the nitrogen budgets during the past decade, and great regional differences exist in the nitrogen budgets of the PRD, several cities such as Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan and Guangzhou have to face severer nitrogen pollution potential at present.
Using 15N tracer technique, we quantify the uptake of soil organic N (glycine) and inorganic N (ammonium N, nitrate N) by diffeerent plant species in the Kobresia tibetica alpine meadow in situ. and examine the extent of niche separation in N source uptake by different plant species in alpine communities. Six treatment sampling plots were randomly set in alpine. We had three types of 15N labeled chemicals including 15NH4Cl, K15NO3 and 15N labeled glycine (abundance of 98%). The 15N concentration of all the chemicals was the same at 11 mmol ·L-1. The six sampling plots all contained two reduplications and each replication was set as 96 cm × 96 cm and at 2 m intervals. The results show: 1) δ15N natural abundance values of seven plant species lie between 0.840‰ and 5.015‰, and the scope is 4.175‰. The N concentrations of seven plant species lie between 14.38－23.31 g·kg-1. 2) As far as the plant uptake of organic N (glycine) is concerned, Poa pretensi can effectively uptake organic nitrogen, and about 36% of the nitrogen of these species comes from soil organic nitrogen sources. Poa crymophila and Ranunculus pulchellus can effectively uptake ammonium, and 41%-43% of its nitrogen comes from soil ammonium. Koeleria cristata can effectively absorb nitrate in comparason to other plant species in the meadow, and about 35% of the nitrogen in this plant comes from soil nitrate. 3) The dominant sedge plant species Kobresia tibetica, Blysmus sinocompressus and Carex atrofusca uptake low amounts of 15N labeled ammonium, nitrate and glycine in soil. The uptake scope is just at 0.085-0.4750 μmol 15N·g-1 DW. This suggested that the sedges cannot use effectively soil organic nitrogen sources at experimental period. 4) These data show the plant species have diverse ways to uptake soil nitrogen in alpine swomp meadows. Two grasses such Poa spp. and dicotyledons such as Ranunculus pulchellus may effectively utilize soil N sources including dissolved organic nitrogen such as amino acids.
With the growing popularity of marine issues, some scholars are concerned about the marine carrying capacity closely. An assessment of marine ecological carrying capacity can provide an overall impacts resulting from the marine ecological construction. Therefore research on the theories and methods of the marine carrying capacity are significant for the regional sustainable development. This paper introduces the model of ecosystem health to establish the general measuring indicators for Liaoning marine ecological carrying capacity and conducts a decade-long research on Liaoning marine system. The concept of the marine ecological carrying capacity based on ecosystem health is investigated to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional studies that are not convenient to use in practice due to their relatively simple assessment standards and conclusions. A corresponding conceptual model and computation model of the marine ecological carrying capacity are further proposed to analyze impacts of the marine ecological construction. In addition, the established methods of index system and the assessing standards for the marine ecological carrying capacity assessment are proposed. For example, the marine ecological carrying capacity of Liaoning Province is studied. An index system, weights and corresponding appraisal standards for the marine ecological carrying capacity are established for analyzing the marine ecological carrying capacity deeply between 2000 and 2010 in this area. The results demonstrate that marine ecological carrying capacity index rises up, its index rose from 0.0724 in 2000 to 0.2184 in 2010, and the state of ecosystem increased from un-health level to sub-health level. The resource and environment carrying capacity remains sub-health level for a long time. Its index rose from 0.0432 in 2000 to 0.1670 in 2010. The ecological resilience index rose from 0.0510 in 2010 to 0.1249 in 2010, and the state of ecosystem increased from un-health level to sub-health level and reached the health level in 2010. The potential human activities remain un-health level and this situation takes a turn for the better in almost two years. Its index is continuous declining between 2002 and 2006, their state of health level before 2009 had been in the unhealthy state, only in 2009 and 2010 it was in the sub-health state. For the sustainable marine economy, many more efforts should be made in terms of marine industrial structure adjustment, pollution control and marine technology. In future, we must strengthen the marine ecological carrying capacity index optimization to improve the level of ecological carrying capacity and health level and realize the sustainable development of marine economy. This research put forward method for measuring the ecosystem health related marine ecological carrying capacity in view of the fact that some data are not available, the selection of indicators is not so comprehensive, but this paper helps broaden the field of vision and makes human activities greatly reflected in marine ecological carrying capacity.
At the present stage, the key point which is used to evaluate basic farmland adjustment scheme is scattered in related policy and technical regulations. The poor and scattered farmland which apart from main lines of communication and residential area was always arranged as basic farmland when the local governments implement Regulations on the Protection of Basic Farmland; otherwise, we lack a reliable and effective index system and method to evaluate whether basic farmland adjustment scheme is rational in practice. The article tries to build an evaluation index system which gives consideration to both quantity and quality target of basic farmland based on the principle of without reducing quantity and quality. The score of constraint index will be updated by the related regulations in laws or technical standards. The score of quality control index will be amended by comparing the previous scheme with the current. The rationality of basic farmland is estimated according to the comprehensive score of both constraint and quality control index. Finally, it tests this method whether can be applied to appraise the rationality of adjustment scheme by taking Longmen County in Guangdong Province as an example. Results show that basic farmland adjustment scheme of Longmen County is up to the requirements of both quantity and quality in law, and it also turns out that the index system is feasible and practical.
The climatic region of autumn continous rainy weather in Southwest China was divided by REOF analysis method with the daily precipitation data of 338 stations in the study area from September to November during 1961 to 2009. The trend of change, the abrupt change characteristic and periodic characteristic about autumn continous rainy days were analysed by linear trend, sliding t test, Yamamoto test, Mann-Kendall test and wavelets analysis method. The results show that there were more autumn continous rainy weather in the east than the west of Southwest China. In southeast of Sichuan, southwest of Chongqing and north of Guizhou, the autumn continous rainy weather were the most, with an annual frequency being above 80%, and the annual mean was above 10 days. There were four climatic zones about autumn continous rainy weather in Southwest China, including east of Sichuan Basin, west of Sichuan Basin, south of Guizhou and northeast of Yunnan. The autumn continous rainy days had a decreasing trend in the east of Sichuan Basin, south of Guizhou and west of Sichuan Basin. However, the northeast of Yunnan had an increasing trend, but all insignificant. The autumn continuous rainy days had an abrupt change from more to less in 1988 in south of Guizhou, it had an inverse mutation in 1985 and 1995 in northeast of Yunnan. The interdecadal oscillation period had obvious difference between each subregion, ranging from 10 a to 27 a. The interannual oscillation period was at a scale of 2-5 a in east of Sichuan Basin and south of Guizhou, but in west of Sichuan Basin and northeast of Yunnan, it was 2-3 a.
Central Asia is located in the hinterland of the Eurasia, comprising five countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Most of the land belongs to arid land with extreme continental climate. The population is 60.73 million, and the area is 392.68×104 km2. Based on the monitoring data of monthly air temperature and precipitation of 100 selected weather stations from 1901 to 2000 in Central Asia, using the Miami and Thornthwaite Memorial model to calculate potential climate productivity, the characteristics of temperal and spatial of potential climate productivity are analyzed with climatic trend rate, Mann-Kendall test, SPSS and ArcGIS methods. The results showed as follows: 1) Precipitation potential climate productivity (Yr) and evapotranspiration climate potential productivity (Ye) in Central Asia in 100 years appeared a gradual increasing trend, temperature potential climate productivity (Yt) is in an opposite trend, Yr and Ye witnessed four times of mutation, there was none in Yt. 2) Potential climate productivity had obviously regional difference, such as, Yt showed a reducing trend from southwest to northeast, spatial distribution of Yr and Ye was complicated, the eastern was more than the western, generally. 3) Warm and wet climate changing trend is beneficial to the improvement of climate potential productivity, climate potential productivity was more sensitive to humidifying.
River valley is the home of the most advanced ecosystem on the earth. As a key factor of valley ecosystem, development of water resource dominants the growth of whole valley ecosystem. China is one of the earliest countries in the world to harness the valley water resources to breed its civilization, and the country is now boasting for great achievements in an overall development of valley water when tens of big dams are under construction. In 2008, for example, the overall used rate of China's water resources reached 25.9%, while that of the world's average registered only 16.9%. The three valleys of the Huaihe River, the Haihe River and the Yellow River stood at the top with their overall used rates of 67.2%, 66.1% and 61.9%, respectively. Most rivers in the three valleys no longer reach the sea for several months each year. In fact, China is now facing an unexpected challenge when a rapid growth of its socio-economy is thirsty for a diversified water supply, from the industrials such as agriculture, manufacture, power generation to civil departments in both urban and rural areas. More importantly, the general feature of China's water resource structure, divided commonly by the two used-purposes of survival and prosper, is apt for the development of hydro-power generation rather than other uses, compared with other countries. Considering the combined impact of water resource structure, a changeable pattern of water usages and regional development disparities in general, and the global climate change in particular, China could set a target for its overall development of water resources not more than 35% of the national total. Under which, the capacity for water withdrawn would maintain at around 25% of its total resources, and the capacity for hydropower generation would be harnessed by about 50% of its total economically exploitable.
Railway transport is an important way of coal transport in China. Construction of high-speed railway in China not only has a significant impact on economic and social development but also releases certain transport capacity. This paper concerns about the features of coal railway transport in Jiangsu Province,then estimates the capacities of main coal railway transport lines in Jiangsu at three periods: before the construction of high-speed railway in Yangtze River Delta, after the opening of the several high-speed railway lines such as Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway and Nanjing-Shanghai High Speed Railway and after the formation of the high speed railway network in Yangtze River Delta. The result indicates that before the construction of high speed railway network in Yangtze River Delta, coal railway transport lines were limited by a number of factors such as running many high-level passenger trains, having low technical levels, keeping regular railway maintenance etc. Accordingly the pressure of coal transport in Jiangsu is extremely high. However, with the continuous construction of high speed railway network in Yangtze River Delta, the transport capacities of some coal transport railways are released. In the future, with the formation of high speed railway network in Yangtze River Delta, the coal transport capacities of railway will be improved by separating the passenger rails from freight rails as well as planning and building new coal transport rails.
Improving the efficiency of urban tourism is an important way of tourism development in Anhui Province. This paper adopts DEA model to measure the CRS technical efficiency, pure technical and scale efficiency of urban tourism utilization of 17 cities in Anhui in the year of 2005 and 2010, Malmquist productivity index calculation contrast of variation trend of urban tourism efficiency of these cities in Anhui from 2005 to 2010, under the framework of economic production factors analysis. Then, this paper analyzes the regional differentiation of the CRS technical efficiency, pure technical and scale efficiency of urban tourism utilization in Anhui. The causes for urban tourism efficiency differentiation in Anhui are analyzed with coefficient of variation (CV). The reasons for city travel efficiency differences are analyzed with tourism resources, city size, economic base, traffic conditions, reception capacity and other factors in northern Anhui, central Anhui and southern Anhui. Finally, target values of input obtained through DEA model are used to discuss the strategies for improving urban tourism efficiency of each city. The results show that, the input and output efficiency of urban tourism resources has a room for improvement and the productivity change index is consistent with the technological advance index in Anhui, the spatial distribution of urban tourism efficiency in Anhui is characterized by high-value in the south and north and low-value in the middle, as well as west-east differentiation. It is pure technical urban tourism efficiency that mainly determines the CRS technical efficiency as well as its spatial patterns in Anhui. Input redundancy is relatively ubiquity in Anhui, and regional urban tourism efficiency could be improved by the approach of optimizing investment environment, advancing industrial structure adjustment, highlighting the unique feature of industrial development, raising the quality of human resources or increasing the concentration degree of industrial development, and so on.
In order to understand the restoration potential of Spiraea pubescens shrubs which is a degraded vegetation widely distributed in the Northern Mountain Region of Hebei Province, the soil germination seed banks of Spiraea pubescens shrub and other communities were studied by seed germination. The results show that the seed density of Spiraea pubescens shrub soil seed bank was 4013.33 seed·m-2,which was lower than that of Larix gmelinii planation (4646.67 seed·m-2), but higher than that of Corylus heterophylla shrub (1713.33 seed·m-2) and Betula platyphylla natural secondary forest (746.67 seed·m-2). In the soil seed bank of Spiraea pubescens shrubs, only herbaceous plants were founded, without arbor plants and shrub plants, and the other three communities were similar to Spiraea pubescens shrub. The seed density of soil seed bank in both Spiraea pubescens shrubs and the other communities decreased with increasing soil depth and along gradients from lower slope to upslope. There were some similarities to some extent between Spiraea pubescens shrub and the other three communities, but the similarity degree was lower than that of between any two among the other three communities due to the difference between Spiraea pubescens shrub and the other three communities in ecological factors and vegetation characteristics. It was concluded that Spiraea pubescens shrub has significant ecological restoratin potential because of the huge herbaceous soil seed bank in it, but the absence of woody plants seeds, especial arbor plants, hampers the succession process from shrub to forest and that it is necessary for the degraded vegetation like Spiraea pubescens shrub to introduce some trees by artificial measures to promote the ecological restoration process.
This dissertation presents a regional research from the perspective of water by taking heritage city regions as examples. Theoretically speaking, the author investigates the coupling relationship between the land use in heritage city regions and the global land development, therefore considering the heritage city regions as a brief history about human beings imprinted in space. This paper carried out studies on relationship between agricultural geographical regionalization and hydrogeology of the national famous historical and cultural city regions. Rather than evaluate the land suitability with usage coefficients and weights, this research evaluates the land hydrogeological suitability in a statistical way and proposed the concept of agricultural hydrogeological suitability and quantification of the spatial relationship. The primary conclusions of this research include: among the national famous historical and cultural city regions, UNC-1, UNC-2 and UNC-4 are relatively better hydrogeologic types for agriculture, wheras MAG-I-2, MAG-S-2 and MET-2 are relatively worse hydrogeologic types for agriculture. The former is about 2－3 times more suitable than that of the latter. Compared to the national average distribution, and other types of agricultural hydrogeological suitableness can intuitively reflect too. This study can provide reference and basis for the selection of urban construction land.
Reuse of reclaimed-water is an effective way to alleviate the crisis of both water resource shortage and sewage pollution. Decentralized wastewater reuse system is part of the regional water recycle system. The quantitative relation, spatial distribution and balance of raw water and reclaimed-water demand should be considered when researching the feasibility of decentralized wastewater reuse system in certain area. This study explores the potential of high-resolution IKONOS remote sensing data in calculating the quantitative relation and spatial distribution of raw water and reclaimedwater demand, taking the residential areas in Nanjing as a case. Object-oriented classification is applied to obtain land use information and shadow area method to estimate the height of buildings in order to calculate total building area. By introducing the water consumption norm per square meter, the land use information extracted from high-resolution IKONOS remote sensing image processing and GIS analysis became relevant to the raw water and reclaimed-water demand. The quantity and spatial distribution of raw water and reclaimed-water demand in 27 parcels are calculated and the balance between them is analyzed. Object-oriented classification performs well in extracting land use information, especially in distinguishing residential areas. The overall accuracy of classification is 84.41% and the Kappa coefficient is 0.81. Mean square error of building's height estimation using shadow area method is 0.69 m. The final results indicate that, the research area has relatively high production of raw water, 3.52 L/(m2·d), and demand of reclaimed-water, 5.37 L/(m2·d). Raw water in areas mainly consisting of mid-high rise residential buildings could meet the demand of reclaimed water. Therefore, establishing decentralized wastewater treatment systems in these areas can not only reduce sewage discharge, but also improve the utilization of water resources and reduce the clean water demand.
Global water crisis is looming. Virtual water, the amount of water necessary to produce a good or a service, provides key new information for policy makers, because virtual water trade can compensate for water shortages through the geographical shift of good production and the sectoral shift of water consumption. Thus virtual water serves as an alternative way of solving water resources crisis. The input-output framework is one of the main methods of studying virtual water, which can be classified into Single Regional Input-Output model (SRIO) and Multi-Regional Input-Output model (MRIO). However, there are some limitations when applying SRIO or MRIO alone, i.e., SRIO cannot distinguish local water footprint from external water footprint, thus providing very little information for inter-regional virtual water trade, while it is difficult to obtain accurate dataset for MRIO, leading to underestimation. To overcome the shortcomings of these two models, this paper aims at proposing a new method, which can separate local water footprint from external water footprint directly based on single regional input-output data that is much easier to obtain than multi-regional input-output data. In the proposed method, SRIO is adopted to calculate the total water consumption coefficient as the estimated coefficient is much accurate, and then local and external water footprint is separated directly by using single regional input-output dataset, and finally virtual water flow among different regions can be analyzed through inter-regional input-output data. The application of the proposed method to Guangdong Province showed that: 1) the total water footprint of Guangdong Province in 2007 was 333.9×108 m3, with local water footprint of 223.6×108 m3 and external water footprint of 110.3×108 m3, respectively; and 2) in 2007, the virtual water flowing out of Guangdong Province was 445.4×108 m3, and the flowing in was 454.1×108 m3 which mainly came from Hunan, Guangxi and Zhejiang provinces. The results indicate that the proposed method is effective in obtaining a complete total water consumption coefficient thus can obtain accurate estimation, and is easy to distinguish local water footprint from external water footprint and specify the water flow between regions. Virtual water and water footprint can be quantified by combining single regional input-output datasets with multi-regional input-output datasets.
