Based on simulations by the Beijing Climate Center climate system model version 2 (BCC-CSM2), the possible changes in net primary productivity (NPP) of the terrestrial ecosystem in China during the 21st century are explored under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2 (SSP2) 4.5 scenario. We found both the near-term and long-term terrestrial NPP basically shows a unanimously increasing trend, which indicates low ecosystem productivity risk in the future. However, the simple linear regression is insufficient to characterize the long-term variation of NPP. Using the piecewise linear regression approach, we identify a decreasing trend of NPP in large areas for the latter part of the 21st century. In the northeast region (NER) from east Inner Mongolia to west Heilongjiang province, NPP decreases significantly after 2059 at a rate of -0.9% dec-1. In the south region (SR) from Zhejiang to Guangxi provinces, a rapid decline of -2.4% dec-1 is detected after 2085. Further analysis reveals that the rapid decline in SR is primarily attributed to the decrease in precipitation, with temperature playing a secondary role, while the NPP decline in NER seems to have no evident relations with climate change. These findings are useful for making preparations for potential ecosystem crisis in China in the future.
Glaciers provide essential resources and services for human well-being and socio-economic development in arid regions. It is of great significance for regional socio- economic sustainable development and environmental protection to conduct a glacier service value assessment and to analyze its spatiotemporal characteristics. Based on the first and second Chinese glacier inventories of the Qilian Mountains, a glacier service value evaluation system was established. Then the glacier service value and its spatiotemporal variation were assessed by combining the methods of unit area service price, value equivalent factor, and the glacier service value change index (GSCI). Three key results were obtained. (1) The total service value of glaciers in the Qilian Mountains for 2016 was 24.354 billion yuan. The main services provided were climate regulation and runoff regulation, which accounted for 60.58% and 33.14% of the total service value, respectively. Minor services were freshwater supply and hydropower, which accounted for 3.47% and 1.75% of the total value, respectively. The value of other types of services was about 0.259 billion yuan. (2) Among the various river systems in the Qilian Mountains, the Shule River basin had the highest glacier service value (7.771 billion yuan, 31.91%), followed by the Haltang River basin (4.321 billion yuan, 17.74%) and the Beida River basin (3.281 billion yuan, 13.47%). In terms of administrative divisions, the glacier service value of the Qilian Mountains in Qinghai Province was 1.138 billion yuan higher than that of Gansu Province at 11.608 billion yuan, of which the services in the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Jiuquan City were valued at 11.124 (45.68%) and 7.758 (31.86%) billion yuan, respectively. (3) During the period from 1956 to 2010, the service value of glaciers in the Qilian Mountains declined by 435 million yuan, with an acceleration in the decreasing trend from west to east.
Frequent chilling injury has serious impacts on national food security and in northeastern China heavily affects grain yields. Timely and accurate measures are desirable for assessing associated large-scale impacts and are prerequisites to disaster reduction. Therefore, we propose a novel means to efficiently assess the impacts of chilling injury on soybean. Specific chilling injury events were diagnosed in 1989, 1995, 2003, 2009, and 2018 in Oroqen community. In total, 512 combinations scenarios were established using the localized CROPGRO-Soybean model. Furthermore, we determined the maximum wide dynamic vegetation index (WDRVI) and corresponding date of critical windows of the early and late growing seasons using the GEE (Google Earth Engine) platform, then constructed 1600 cold vulnerability models on CDD (Cold Degree Days), the simulated LAI (Leaf Area Index) and yields from the CROPGRO-Soybean model. Finally, we calculated pixel yields losses according to the corresponding vulnerability models. The findings show that simulated historical yield losses in 1989, 1995, 2003 and 2009 were measured at 9.6%, 29.8%, 50.5%, and 15.7%, respectively, closely (all errors are within one standard deviation) reflecting actual losses (6.4%, 39.2%, 47.7%, and 13.2%, respectively). The above proposed method was applied to evaluate the yield loss for 2018 at the pixel scale. Specifically, a sentinel-2A image was used for 10-m high precision yield mapping, and the estimated losses were found to characterize the actual yield losses from 2018 cold events. The results highlight that the proposed method can efficiently and accurately assess the effects of chilling injury on soybean crops.
With rapid globalization, industrial parks are playing an increasingly important role in the national and regional development. Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was put forward, national-level overseas industrial parks of China have emerged with new development features and trends. It is of great importance to carry out a comparative study on domestic and overseas industrial parks of China. Based on the perspective of spatiotemporal evolution, this paper compares and analyzes national-level overseas industrial parks along the Belt and Road (B&R) and domestic industrial parks of China. In time, China’s industrial parks have experienced four stages with distinctive state-led characteristic. There are different development paths and modes for overseas industrial parks along the B&R and domestic industrial parks. In space, the national-level overseas industrial parks are invested and constructed by Chinese enterprises (mostly from the coastal developed cities), and mainly distributed in the countries along the B&R. Through typical cases comparison of Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone and Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, the paper finds that national-level overseas industrial parks are basically market-driven and concentrated in traditional advantageous industries, while domestic industrial parks are mainly government-led high-tech industries. Localization of overseas industrial parks and remote coupling with domestic industrial parks become very important.
The railway is an indispensable feature of a nation’s infrastructure, and the gauge is an internal and objective technical regulation of the railway. In the large-scale regional space, the track gauges reflect the development differences, historical relations and mutual influences between countries and regions. This makes the railway, originally as a regional connection, have special social, political, military and other multiple attributes. Based on this, the paper, from the perspective of railway gauge, takes the Eurasian continent as the case region to explore the spatial pattern, formation mechanism and organizational mode of communication of the Eurasian continental railway geo-system. The results show that 11 kinds of railway gauge structures exist in Eurasia, which respectively belong to three types of wide-gauge, standard-gauge, and narrow-gauge, but the mainstream gauge only includes 1520 mm, 1435 mm and 1067 mm. Considerable variation in the coverage length and space range of different gauges is apparent, which provides a physical and technological basis for railway system differentiation and network fragmentation, which leads to the formation of eight railway geo-systems. Due to different modes for railway transport management in different geographical locations, the geographical pattern and geographical relationship of four transport organizations are formed. What especially important is the emergence of “1435 gauge space” and “1520 gauge space”, as well as the railway geo-space confrontation between them, on the Eurasian continent. Besides, we also find that the railway geo-system of Eurasia is mainly affected by the technology dissemination, path dependence, geopolitics, national defense and the colonial expansion of military latitude, and on this basis, five geo-modes of railway gauge propagation are formed.
To evaluate the climatic and ecological impacts of anthropogenic activities in global change research, it is essential to reconstruct historical land use and land cover change on regional and global scales. In this study, we reconstructed cropland areas for 54 provinces within the European part of Tsarist Russia (ETR) over the periods of 1696-1914 using historical data, including cropland area, population, grain consumption, and grain yield per unit area. The main results are as follows. (1) Total cropland areas and fractional cropland areas of ETR for 8 time sections during 1696-1914 were reconstructed, the former increased from 31.98×104 km2 to 147.40×104 km2, and the latter increased from 7.89% to 29.20%. The per capita cropland area decreased from 0.0246 km2 to 0.0113 km2 during 1696-1914. (2) Cropland expanded from the central and southwestern ETR to the black soil region, surrounding area of the Volga River, Ukraine region, the new Russia region, the vicinity of Ural, and north Caucasus region. (3) The expansion of territory, increase and migration of population, policies related to agricultural development and foreign trade, and the impacts of climate change were the reasons for the changes in cropland within ETR from 1696 to 1914. (4) In 1914, the cropland area and fractional cropland area of each province varied from 0.16×104 km2 and 0.76% to 5.65×104 km2 and 76.68%, respectively. (5) The comparisons show that the cropland areas of ETR in this study for 1696-1914 are higher than those in the HYDE 3.2 dataset. The main reason for this finding might be the underestimation of per capita cropland areas in the HYDE 3.2 dataset, which values remained at approximately 0.01 km2 from 1700 to 1920.
The pattern for utilization of rural space is closely related to rural transformation development (RTD). The problem of rural space utilization is an important manifestation of the uncoordinated relationship between land use patterns and rural development status during a transformation period. Considering the rural space utilization issue, this article seeks to analyze the interaction mechanisms between land use transition (LUT) and rural spatial governance and then build a rural spatial governance analysis framework based on LUT. Also, the paper explores the internal relationship between rural spatial governance and rural vitalization and discusses the research prospective of the interaction. The study found that: (1) Rural space utilization has systemic problems such as limited development space, ill-defined ownership and poor organization, which have become important obstacles for rural development. (2) The uncoordinated relationship between LUT and RTD is an important reason for the dilemma surrounding rural space utilization. (3) The LUT provides a basis for determining the timing of rural spatial governance, specifying spatial governance objectives, and clarifying rural spatial governance methods. (4) The construction of a comprehensive analysis framework of “matter-ownership-organization” of rural space based on the LUT has created conditions for the orderly promotion of rural spatial governance. (5) Rural spatial governance which facilitates the integration of urban-rural development is an important foundation for rural vitalization. (6) Interaction analysis of LUT, RTD and rural spatial governance is conducive to facilitating research on the operational mechanism of rural regional systems and to expanding the research field of rural geography.
There is a lack of basic theory and method to examine the effect of administrative division (AD) adjustment on the regional development. Based on the theory and practice of Chinese AD adjustments, the paper defined the concept of administrative region potential (ARP) and developed the quantitative model to measure the ARP. Then, the model was validated taking Chongqing as an empirical case. The results show that: (1) the ARP consists of energy of position (i.e., geographic space factors) and gravitational potential energy (i.e., administrative levels and management system factors). Administrative division adjustment can change the ARP, thereby changing its path and driving force of regional development. (2) The ARP model of Chongqing city can reflect the effects of administrative division adjustment events on the Chongqing city objectively. Specifically, ARP includes variables of land jurisdiction, human capital level, fixed assets investment capacity, administrative hierarchy of fiscal decentralization and administrative decentralization. (3) The ARP promotion has significant positive influence on the performance of local economic development in Chongqing city. (4) Reasonable AD adjustments will help the region integrate production elements and resources, enhance the political power of the city, improve its ARP, and then promote local economic development. The ARP model is proved to be an efficient way to understand and explain the regional effect of AD adjustment. It provides a new analytical perspective for the planning of AD adjustment in various regions, and can also be used as a practical method for assessing the effects of AD adjustment.
The border areas of the Tibetan Plateau and the neighboring mountainous areas have a high incidence of earthquakes with a magnitude greater than Ms 5.0, as well as having a dense distribution of geological disasters such as collapses, landslides, and debris flows. Revealing the post-disaster economic development and recovery process is very important for enhancing disaster prevention and response capacity in order to formulate control policies and recovery methods for post-disaster economic reconstruction based on economic resilience. Using long-term socioeconomic data and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, this paper calculated the economic resilience index of the areas most severely affected by the Wenchuan Earthquake of 2008 and adopted the improved variable returns to scale (VRS) date envelopment analysis (DEA) model and the Malmquist productivity index to analyze the efficiency and effect of annual post-disaster recovery. The results show that: (1) the economic resilience index of the areas most severely affected by the Wenchuan Earthquake was 0.877. The earthquake resulted in a short-term economic recession in the affected areas, but the economy returned to pre-quake levels within two years. In addition, the industrial economy was less resilient than agriculture and the service industry. (2) The comprehensive economic recovery efficiency of the disaster-stricken area in the year following the disaster was 0.603. The comprehensive efficiency, the pure technical efficiency, and the scale efficiency of the plain and hilly areas were significantly greater than those of the plateau and mountain areas. (3) The annual fluctuation in total factor productivity (TFP) following the disaster was considerable, and the economic recovery efficiency decreased significantly, resulting in a short-term economic recession. The TFP index returned to steady state following decreases of 33.7% and 15.2%, respectively, in the two years following the disaster. (4) The significant decrease in the post-disaster recovery efficiency was caused mainly by technological changes, and the renewal of the production system was the leading factor in determining the economic resilience following the disaster. With the decline in the scale of economic recovery following the earthquake, long-term economic recovery in the disaster-stricken areas depended mainly on pure technical efficiency, and the improvement in the latter was the driving force for maintaining the long-term growth of the post-disaster economy. Therefore, according to the local characteristics of natural environment and economic system, the disaster-stricken areas need to actively change and readjust their economic structures. At the same time, attention should be paid to updating the production system to enhance the level of technological progress and give full play to the scale effects of large-scale capital, new facilities, human resources, and other investment factors following the disaster so as to enhance the impact of economic resilience and recovery efficiency in response to the disaster.
