With the rapid development of social economy and urban−rural integration, the phenomenon of farmland abandonment worldwide has proved to be one of the main trends of land use and land cover change (LUCC), and profoundly affected the rural landscape and regional ecological environment. Restricted by the natural environment, economic development and backward agricultural technology, the phenomenon of farmland abandonment is also common in the Qingzang Plateau (QP). Therefore, this paper adopted the spatial autocorrelation method to analyze the spatial pattern of abandonment in the agricultural and pastoral areas of the Qingzang Plateau (APA−QP) in 2017, and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to explore the effects of geographical resources, socio-economic development and location conditions on farmland abandonment. This study found that: 1) From 2015 to 2017, the abandoned farmland area in the APA−QP was approximately 18.23 × 104 ha, with an overall abandonment rate of 15.18%. On the whole, it showed the distribution characteristics of “strong in the south and weak in the north, strong in the east and weak in the west”. 2) There were positive spatial correlation between both abandoned area and abandonment rate in the APA−QP, showing “concave” and “convex” patterns, respectively, mainly concentrated in the Huang−shui Valley and the Southeast Tibet; while in the western and northern regions, the degree of abandonment was relatively low. 3) Farmland abandonment in the APA−QP was mainly driven by the geographical environment changes and farmers’ decision−making on farmland utilization. There was significant spatial heterogeneity on farmland abandonment associated with the impact of geographical resources, socio−economics and location conditions. The geographical resource factors had a positive impact on the abandonment, and were strongly constrained by natural geographic conditions such as altitude and slope. The farmland resources in the Qingzang Plateau are limited, but are of strategic significance for the sustainable development of agriculture in the whole Qingzang Plateau. In order to realize the rational distribution of agriculture and animal husbandry and the sustainable utilization of farmland resources in the plateau region, land use strategies should be implemented according to regional differences and regional advantages in order to ensure the ecological environment security of Qingzang Plateau.
Ecosystem is a fundamental organizational unit of the biosphere in which biological communities interact with their non-biological environment through energy flows and material cycles. Ecosystem science is the study of patterns, processes, and services of ecosystems. Since the 1990s, rising concerns regarding global climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and sustainability of the human-dominated biosphere have stimulated the growth of ecosystem science, which is expected to provide systematic solutions to many of these major issues facing human societies. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current progress in ecosystem science and identifies some key research challenges facing this discipline. We demonstrate that a key feature of the current progress in ecosystem science is its evolution from primarily theoretical explorations toward more systematic, integrative and application-oriented studies. Specifically, five major changes in the discipline over the past several decades can be identified. These include: (1) the expansion of the primary goal from understanding nature to include human activities; (2) the broadening of the research focus from single ecosystem types to macro-ecosystems comprising multiple regional ecosystems; (3) the shifting of research methods from small-scale observations and experiments to large-scale observations, network experiments, and model simulations; (4) the increasing attention to comprehensive integration of ecosystem components, processes, and scales; and (5) the shifting from a primarily biology-oriented focus to an integrated multi-disciplinary scientific field. While ecosystem science still faces many challenges in the future, these directional changes, along with the rapidly enriched research tools and data acquisition capabilities, lay a promising ground for the discipline’s future as a fundamental scientific basis for solving many environmental challenges facing human societies.
Mapping spatiotemporal land cover changes offers opportunities to better understand trends and drivers of environmental change and helps to identify more sustainable land management strategies. This study investigates the spatiotemporal patterns of changes in land covers, forest harvest areas and soil erosion rates in Nordic countries, namely Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. This region is highly sensitive to environmental changes, as it is experiencing high levels of human pressure and among the highest rates of global warming. An analysis that uses consistent land cover dataset to quantify and compares the recent spatiotemporal changes in land cover in the Nordic countries is missing. The recent products issued by the European Space Agency and the Copernicus Climate Change Service framework provide the possibility to investigate the historical land cover changes from 1992 to 2018 at 300 m resolution. These maps are then integrated with time series of forest harvest areas between 2004 and 2018 to study if and how forest management is represented in land cover products, and with soil erosion data to explore status and recent trends in agricultural land. Land cover changes typically involved from 4% to 9% of the total area in each country. Wetland showed the strongest reduction (11,003 km2, −11% of the wetland area in 1992), followed by forest (8,607 km2, −1%) and sparse vegetation (5,695 km2, −7%), while agriculture (15,884 km2, 16%) and settlement (3,582 km2, 84%) showed net increases. Wetland shrinkage dominated land cover changes in Norway (5,870 km2, −18%), followed by forest and grassland with a net gain of 3,441 km2 (3%) and 3, 435 km2 (10%), respectively. In Sweden, forest areas decreased 13,008 km2 (−4%), mainly due to agriculture expansion (9,211 km2, 29%). In Finland, agricultural areas increased by 5,982 km2 (24%), and wetland decreased by 6,698 km2 (−22%). Settlement had the largest net growth in Denmark (717 km2, 70%), mainly from conversion of agriculture land. Soil erosion rates in Nordic countries are lower than the global average, but they are exacerbating in several locations (especially western Norway). The integration of the land cover datasets with maps of forest harvest areas shows that the majority of the losses in forest cover due to forestry operations are largely undetected, but a non-negligible share of the forest-to-agriculture (up to 19%) or forest-to-grassland (up to 51%) transitions overlap with the harvested sites. Forestry activity in the study region primarily involves small-scale harvest events that are difficult to be detected at the 300 m resolution of the land cover dataset. An accurate representation of forest management remains a challenge for global datasets of land cover time series, and more interdisciplinary international efforts are needed to address this gap. Overall, this analysis provides a detailed overview of recent changes in land cover and forest management in Nordic countries as represented by state-of-the-art global datasets, and offers insights to future studies aiming to improve these data or apply them in land surface models, climate models, landscape ecology, or other applications.
Wind energy development receives broad support but is often opposed at the local level due to nuisance concerns and uncertainties about how it affects the landowners living due to the turbines and the broader community. Local opposition to wind energy development can be a powerful force slowing or even ending its implementation in a given region. Oklahoma, USA is currently ranked as 4th in the United States in current wind energy production and has seen significant pushback from some local communities as a renewable energy resource. Previous studies have examined wind energy development's impact on rural education income, and property values of different communities in Oklahoma. However, funding information on how wind energy development affects the individuals living alongside the turbines are limited. Using fifteen interviews with landowners, site-managers, community representatives, and pro-wind non-profit organization representatives, this study finds that individuals who live in proximity to wind energy development, particularly those involved in the agricultural industry, have created novel and unique uses for wind farm infrastructure. It also finds that local perceptions of wind energy production are mostly positive and provides increased knowledge of how wind energy development affects the individuals and communities that are hosting the turbines and related infrastructure.
The negative cardiorespiratory health outcomes due to extreme temperatures and air pollution are widely studied, but knowledge about the effectiveness of the implementation of adaptive mechanisms remains unclear. The objective of this paper is to explore the evidence of adaptive mechanisms for cardiorespiratory diseases regarding extreme temperatures and air pollution by comparing the results of two systematic literature review (SLR) processes sharing the same initial research question but led by two research groups with different academic backgrounds working in the same multidisciplinary team. We start by presenting the methodological procedures and the results of the SLR triggered by the research group mainly composed by researchers with a background in geography (named geographical strategy). We then compare these results with those achieved in the SLR led by the research group with a background in epidemiology (named epidemiological strategy). Both SLR were developed under the EU Horizon 2020 Project “EXHAUSTION”. The results showed: 1) the lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of adaptation measures, namely due to the limited number of studies about the topic, the preponderance of studies dedicated to heat extremes or the unbalance between different adaptation measures; 2) that the choice of search terms in the geographical strategy, despite being more comprehensive at first sight, ended up retrieving less results, but it brought new studies that can complement the results of the epidemiological strategy. Therefore, it is suggested that to strengthen the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of adaptation measures, powerful multidisciplinary teams should work together in the preparation of SLR in topics of great complexity, such as the one presented in this paper.
Terracing greatly affects soil properties, ecosystem services, human welfare and geographical sustainability. The purpose of this article is to determine the influence of terracing on soil properties across diverse regions in China. Three representative terrace types, including dryland loess terraces, dry-stone terraces, and paddy terraces, were selected as case study areas. Soil sampling was stratified according to thickness of soil layers in each terraced area. Based on field investigations and soil sampling, combined with the means of variance, correlation, redundancy and regression analysis, we analyzed the characteristics of soil properties in the terraces across three areas. Results showed that: (1) alterations of soil physicochemical properties mainly depend on differences between soil parent materials in such regions; (2) Due to the existence of “four-element isomorphism” in the ecosystem and reasonable human activities, paddy terraces had the greatest impact on soil properties which is mainly reflected in decreasing soil pH and increasing SOC, TN, and TK; (3) The content of SOC and TN in different areas was higher in terraced fields than in the sloped lands and decreased with soil deepening; (4) To maintain sufficient supply of soil nutrients and support the sustainability of agricultural terraces, it is necessary to apply manure to improve soil fertility and accelerate its aggregation in the terraces. For example, an increase in the application of nitrogen fertilizer in terraced fields in Hebei and Gansu provinces, which have a serious deficiency in soil available phosphorus (AP), is necessary to get greater amounts of P fertilization. The present study offers a theoretical foundation for the sustainability of terraced ecosystems through efficient crop production, which is the basis for strengthening the ecological security of terraced areas and promoting regional sustainability in those fragile mountains.
Geographic information science (GIScience) and remote sensing have long provided essential data and methodological support for natural resource challenges and environmental problems research. With increasing advances in information technology, natural resource and environmental science research faces the dual challenges of data and computational intensiveness. Therefore, the role of remote sensing and GIScience in the fields of natural resources and environmental science in this new information era is a key concern of researchers. This study clarifies the definition and frameworks of these two disciplines and discusses their role in natural resource and environmental research. GIScience is the discipline that studies the abstract and formal expressions of the basic concepts and laws of geography, and its research framework mainly consists of geo-modeling, geo-analysis, and geo-computation. Remote sensing is a comprehensive technology that deals with the mechanisms of human effects on the natural ecological environment system by observing the earth surface system. Its main areas include sensors and platforms, information processing and interpretation, and natural resource and environmental applications. GIScience and remote sensing provide data and methodological support for resource and environmental science research. They play essential roles in promoting the development of resource and environmental science and other related technologies. This paper provides forecasts of ten future directions for GIScience and eight future directions for remote sensing, which aim to solve issues related to natural resources and the environment.
As a discipline, the science of natural hazards and disaster risk aims to explain the spatial-temporal pattern, process and mechanism, emergency response and risk mitigation of natural hazards, which requires a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach. With the support of Natural Science Finance of China (NSFC) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in-depth research and systematic analysis on natural hazards and disaster risk were conducted. In this paper, the state of the art in research on natural hazards is summarized from seven aspects: formation process, mechanism and dynamic of natural hazards, disaster risk assessment, forecast, monitoring and early warning, disaster mitigation, emergency treatment and rescue, risk management and post-disaster reconstruction. The trends within the natural hazards and disaster risk as a discipline were identified, along with existing shortcomings and significant gaps that need to be addressed. This paper highlighted: 1) the scientific challenges including the frontier scientific issues and technological gaps on natural hazards and disaster risk discipline from 2025 to 2035 in China, and 2) the proposal to develop a systemic and holistic natural hazards and disaster risk discipline.
Priestley-Taylor equation (PT) and the Penman-Monteith equation (PM) are commonly used methods for regional evapotranspiration monitoring, using the PT coefficient (αa) and PM crop/vegetation coefficient (Kc). This paper investigates the seasonal changes in αa and Kc at five sites in Australia and China, to understand the relationship between environmental conditions and evapotranspiration when applying different evaporation estimation methods. The research shows that higher actual evapotranspiration does not lead to higher αa and Kc values. αa and Kc perform similarly in cropland and forest environments in both China and Australia. Both αa and Kc continuously increase to a peak during the growing season and then decrease to their lowest values during the winter season. Considering Kc’s similar performance to αa and its greater data processing requirements, Kc has few advantages for estimating regional evapotranspiration. Applying the Priestley-Taylor equation with a regional α indicator will enhance the accuracy and reduce the workload when estimating regional evapotranspiration for similar landcover types based on remote sensing.
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary science developed in the process of understanding and solving ecological and environmental problems. In order to tackle these problems, environmental science research is expected to reveal the source, behavior, fate, exposure, and risks of pollutants in the environment and develop potential solutions to control pollution. It provides the scientific basis for decision-makers to establish environmental and economic policies, and promote concerted efforts for the sustainable development of society. Here, we articulate the development patterns, challenges, and future research needs of environmental science in China based on literature review and expert panel discussion. Environmental science research has evolved significantly in the past decade with an increasing diversity of environmental pollutants and health impacts, new technologies and methods, deepening fusion of multiple disciplines, and emerging solutions for pollution control. Its future development relies on the advances in our knowledge on the fate and transport of pollutants, regional environmental processes, ecotoxicological effects, environmental exposure and health effects, environmental analysis and monitoring, source control and reduction, environmental remediation, as well as environmental risk management. For each of these fields, we summarize the significant challenges and highlight the research demands for China. Based on the status quo of China's environmental science research and future needs, we provide recommendations to promote its future development, including encouraging innovation and interdisciplinary research, providing decision support for national needs, encouraging international collaboration, and improving collaboration mechanisms.