Large regional differences and uneven regional development are fundamental challenges for China. Balanced regional development is an important issue in research on development geography. This study reviews the course of balanced regional development in China and summarizes its characteristics in each period. The results show that inter-regional development in China has undergone successive periods of balanced and unbalanced development. Each period has enhanced social development and contributed to a more balanced regional development. This paper discusses the scientific connotation of balanced regional development, and invokes sustainable development theory to argue that we should pay attention to the differences in resource endowments among regions, and solves the imbalance among the economy, humans, and nature to promote the spatial balance of regional development and green development for better coordination between economy and ecology. The balanced promotion of the well-being of people in each region is the ultimate goal of balanced regional development. We then use concepts from development geography to examine China’s path of balanced regional development from the three perspectives of society, the economy, and ecology. Suggestions are also provided for the balanced development of China’s regions and the improvement of public well-being.
In 2020, the decisive victory of building a moderately well-off society in all aspects means that absolute poverty in rural China has been completely eliminated. Consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation and establishing a long-term mechanism to solve relative poverty have become key issues in high-quality development of underdeveloped areas. In this study, human-earth system is employed to analyze the element composition, structural organization and functional state of underdeveloped areas. The results show that poverty in underdeveloped areas stems from the lack of the coupling and coordinating mechanism among human, economic, resource and environmental elements, which is not conducive to transforming the ecological advantages into the advantages of regional development. In the antipoverty stage, underdeveloped areas innovate the human-earth coupling and coordinating mechanism through a series of targeted measures, promote the organic combination of poverty alleviation, ecological conservation and sustainable development, and boost the transformation of regional development and the increase of farmers’ incomes. Focusing on the 14th Five-year Plan (2021-2025) and the long-term goal of 2035, governments in underdeveloped areas should make full use of the policy support to explore scientific methods of modern governance and sustainable development. In particular, it is necessary to practice the concept that “clear waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” and take the road of the ecologicalization of industry and the industrialization of ecology by establishing a policy system of “green land”, “green people”, “green industry” and “green right”, thus building an endogenous growth mechanism of sustainable poverty alleviation and green development in China’s underdeveloped areas.
Urban resilience is an emerging research topic of urban studies, and its essence is described by the ability of cities to resist, recover, and adapt to uncertain disturbances. This paper constructs a “Size-Density-Morphology” urban ecological resilience evaluation system, uses a coupling coordination degree model to measure the degree of coupling coordination between urbanization and ecological resilience in the Pearl River Delta from 2000 to 2015, and conducts an in-depth discussion on its spatiotemporal characteristics. The results show the following. (1) From 2000 to 2015, the urbanization level of cities in the study area generally increased while the level of ecological resilience declined. The coupling coordination degree between the two systems decreased from basic coordination to basic imbalance. (2) In terms of spatial distribution, the coupling coordination degree between urbanization and ecological resilience of cities presented a circular pattern that centered on the cities at the estuary of the Pearl River and increased toward the periphery. (3) Ecological resilience sub-systems played variable roles in the coupling coordination between urbanization and ecological resilience. Specifically, size resilience mainly played a reverse blocking role; the influence of morphology resilience was generally positive and continued to increase over time; the effect of density resilience was positive and continued to decline and further became negative after falling below zero. The main pathways for achieving coordinated and sustainable development of future urbanization and ecological resilience in the Pearl River Delta include: leading the coordinated development of regions with new urbanization, improving ecological resilience by strictly observing the three areas and three lines, adapting to ecological carrying capacity, and rationally arranging urban green spaces.
This paper studied the fertilizer rate (FR), fertilizer use efficiency (FUE) and fertilizer overuse rate (FOR) of rice, corn and wheat in China from 1998 to 2018 and briefly analysed the reasons why farmers were willing to apply more fertilizers. (1) The FR of grain in China reached 373.7 kg/ha in 2018, an increase of 26.8% compared to that in 1998. In 2018, the FR for corn was the highest, at 411.2 kg/ha, compared to the values of 338.3 kg/ha for rice and 371.7 kg/ha for wheat. (2) In recent years, the FUE of grain in China has obviously improved, with values of 32.9% in 1998, 36.7% in 2008, and 39.3% in 2018. In 2018, the FUE for rice was the highest (41.2%), followed by that for corn (39.9%), and the FUE for wheat was the lowest (36.0%). (3) By 2018, fertilizer was overused in all zones of rice, corn and wheat. In 2018, the average FOR for wheat reached 69.0%, which was 35.9% higher than that for corn and 42.8% higher than that for rice. (4) The lower price of chemical fertilizers was the main reason leading to overapplication. (5) Establishing market mechanisms and adjusting regional planting structures can be effective in reducing the application of chemical fertilizers.
The study of temperature change in major countries of the world since the 1980s is a key scientific issue given that such data give insights into the spatial differences of global temperature change and can assist in combating climate change. Based on the reanalysis of seven widely accepted datasets, which include trends in climate change and spatial interpolation of the land air temperature data, the changes in the temperature of major countries from 1981 to 2019 and the spatial-temporal characteristics of global temperature change have been assessed. The results revealed that the global land air temperature from the 1980s to 2019 varied at a rate of 0.320°C/10a, and exhibited a significantly increasing trend, with a cumulative increase of 0.835°C. The mean annual land air temperature in the northern and southern hemispheres varied at rates of 0.362°C/10a and 0.147°C/10a, respectively, displaying significantly increasing trends with cumulative increases of 0.828°C and 0.874°C, respectively. Across the globe, the rates of change of the mean annual temperature were higher at high latitudes than at middle and low latitudes, with the highest rates of change occurring in regions at latitudes of 80°-90°N, followed by regions from 70°-80°N, then from 60°-70°N. The global land surface air temperature displayed an increasing trend, with more than 80% of the land surface showing a significant increase. Greenland, Ukraine, and Russia had the highest rates of increase in the mean annual temperature; in particular, Greenland experienced a rate of 0.654°C/10a. The regions with the lowest rates of increase of mean annual temperature were mainly in New Zealand and the equatorial regions of South America, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa, where the rates were <0.15°C/10a. Overall, 136 countries (93%), out of the 146 countries surveyed, exhibited a significant warming, while 10 countries (6.849%) exhibited no significant change in temperature, of which 3 exhibited a downward trend. Since the 1980s, there have been 4, 34 and 68 countries with levels of global warming above 2.0°C, 1.5°C and 1.0°C, respectively, accounting statistically for 2.740%, 23.288% and 46.575% of the countries examined. This paper takes the view that there was no global warming hiatus over the period 1998-2019.
Climate change is a global environmental crisis, but there have been few studies of the effects of climate change on cereal yields on the Tibetan Plateau. We used data from meteorological stations and statistical yearbooks to assess the impacts of climate change on cereal yields in Tibet. Three types of statistical models were selected: fixed-effects model, first-difference models, and linear detrending models. We analyzed the impacts of climate change (including the minimum temperature, precipitation, growing degree days and solar radiation) on cereal yields in Tibet from 1993 to 2017 at the county, prefecture-level city, and autonomous region scales. The results showed that the sensitivity of cereal yields in Tibet to temperature (minimum temperature and growing degree days) was greater than their sensitivity to precipitation and solar radiation. The joint impacts of climate variables were positive, but the sensitivity and significance varied in different regions. The impacts of minimum temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation were positive in all cities, apart from the negative impacts of growing degree days on cereal yields in Lhasa. The impacts of climate trends on cereal yields in Tibet were positive and the results were in the range of 1.5%-4.8%. Among the three types of model, the fixed-effects model was the most robust and the linear detrending model performed better than the first-difference model. The robustness of the first-difference model decreased after adding the interaction terms between different climate variables. Our findings will help in implementing more spatially targeted agricultural adaptations to cope with the impacts of climate change on the agro-ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau.
Glaciers are a reliable freshwater resource in arid regions of West China and the vulnerability of its changes is closely related to regional ecosystem services and economic sustainable development. Here, we took the Qilian Mountains as an example and analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of glacier changes from 1998 to 2018, based on remote sensing images and the Second Chinese Glacier Inventory. We estimated the basic organizational framework and evaluation index system of glacier change vulnerability from exposure, sensitivity and adaptability, which covered the factors of physical geography, population status and socio-economic level. We analyzed the spatial and temporal evolutions of glacier change vulnerability by using the vulnerability evaluation model. Our results suggested that: (1) Glacier area and volume decreased by 71.12±98.98 km2 and 5.59±4.41 km3, respectively, over the recent two decades, which mainly occurred at the altitude below 4800 m, with an area shrinking rate of 2.5%. In addition, glaciers in the northern aspect (northwest, north and northeast) had the largest area reduction. Different counties exhibited remarkable discrepancies in glacier area reduction, Tianjuan and Minle presented the maximum and minimum decrease, respectively. (2) Glacier change vulnerability level showed a decreasing trend in space from the central to the northwestern and southeastern regions with remarkable differences. Vulnerability level had increased significantly over time and was mainly concentrated in moderate, high and extreme levels with typical characteristics of phases and regional complexity. Our study can not only help to understand and master the impacts of recent glacier changes on natural and social aspects but also be conducive to evaluate the influences of glacier retreat on socio-economic developments in the future, thus providing references for formulating relevant countermeasures to achieve regional sustainable development.
The Yangtze River Watershed in China is a climate change hotspot featuring strong spatial and temporal variability; hence, it poses a certain threat to social development. Identifying the characteristics of and regions vulnerable to climate change is significantly important for formulating adaptive countermeasures. However, with regard to the Yangtze River Watershed, there is currently a lack of research on these aspects from the perspective of natural and anthropogenic factors. To address this issue, in this study, based on the temperature and precipitation records from 717 meteorological stations, the RClimDex and random forest models were used to assess the spatiotemporal characteristics of climate change and identify mainly the natural and anthropogenic factors influencing climate change hotspots in the Yangtze River Watershed for the period 1958-2017. The results indicated a significant increasing trend in temperature, a trend of wet and dry polarization in the annual precipitation, and that the number of temperature indices with significant variations was 2.8 times greater than that of precipitation indices. Significant differences were also noted in the responses of the climate change characteristics of the sub-basins to anthropogenic and natural factors; the delta plain of the Yangtze River estuary exhibited the most significant climate changes, where 88.89% of the extreme climate indices varied considerably. Furthermore, the characteristics that were similar among the identified hotpots, including human activities (higher Gross Domestic Product and construction land proportions) and natural factors (high altitudes and large proportions of grassland and water bodies), were positively correlated with the rapid climate warming.
The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) is a region in China with a serious contradiction between economic growth and environmental pollution. Exploring the spatiotemporal effects and influencing factors of air pollution in the region is highly important for formulating policies to promote the high-quality development of urban industries. This study uses the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to analyze the local direct and spatial spillover effects of industrial transformation on air pollution and quantifies the contribution of each factor. From 2008 to 2018, there was a significant spatial agglomeration of industrial sulfur dioxide emissions (ISDE) in the YRD, and every 1% increase in ISDE led to a synchronous increase of 0.603% in the ISDE in adjacent cities. The industrial scale index (ISCI) and industrial structure index (ISTI), as the core factors of industrial transformation, significantly affect the emissions of sulfur dioxide in the YRD, and the elastic coefficients are 0.677 and -0.368, respectively. The order of the direct effect of the explanatory variables on local ISDE is ISCI>ISTI>foreign direct investment (FDI)>enterprise technological innovation (ETI)>environmental regulation (ER)> per capita GDP (PGDP). Similarly, the order of the spatial spillover effect of all variables on ISDE in adjacent cities is ISCI>PGDP>FDI>ETI>ISTI>ER, and the coefficients of the ISCI and ISTI are 1.531 and 0.113, respectively. This study contributes to the existing research that verifies the environmental Kuznets curve in the YRD, denies the pollution heaven hypothesis, indicates the Porter hypothesis, and provides empirical evidence for the formation mechanism of regional environmental pollution from a spatial spillover perspective.
Protected areas have a double mandate of both “protection” and “use.” Nature- based tourism is considered an effective tool in terms of environmental conservation. Understanding the causes and consequences of a spatiotemporal succession of tourism construction is an important channel to explore the changes of tourism-environment interaction in the protected area. To analyze the spatio-temporal variations in tourism construction lands, we adopted Mt. Bogda as an example. We systematically quantified the interaction between these changes and environmental variables and explored the evolution process of tourism-environment interaction of the mountainous protected area in the northwest arid region. Our results revealed the following: (1) In the Bogda protected area, the proportion of tourism construction lands first appeared to be increasing, then decreasing dramatically, and finally growing slowly. The spatial expansion of tourism construction lands followed the “core-periphery” pattern, respectively showing shapely infilling, reasonable agglomeration, barycenter shift, and outlying growth from 1990 to 2018 as the stages of concentrating on the core. (2) The higher land-use intensity of tourism construction drove the changes of landscape fragmentation, diversity, stability, primitive, and nature degree in the protected area. The coupling coordination between tourism and the environment in the Bogda area decreased at first, and then slowly increased. Meanwhile, tourism did not cause irreversible damage to the natural environment, and the coupling coordination degree between tourism and the environment was still in the state of balanced development. It expressed the states of original balanced, development exceeds environment and barely balanced, and superiorly balanced. The historical evolution of tourism-environment interaction in Bogda reflects the pattern of periodic changes in China’s protected areas to a certain extent.
