Against the backdrop of global climate change, the threat of extreme rainfall and flooding hazards to urban safety is becoming increasingly serious, and there is an urgent need to improve the resilience of cities through the construction of sponge cities. However, improving the sponge city’s capacity for resisting the risk of urban flooding is challenging. The relevant concept of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) is currently one of the main international theories of urban resilience, and it has important value for enhancing urban stormwater resilience. An approach for improving the stormwater resilience of sponge cities is presented in this paper, using the urban design of Jiangchuanlu Street in Shanghai as an example and the stormwater model to simulate flood disasters on Jiangchuanlu Street. In addition to the simulation results, the population and property conditions of the site were combined in order to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment through the risk matrix. Then, the Eco-DRR measures were implemented to enhance the urban stormwater resilience of Jiangchuanlu Street based on the assessment results. Finally, the ecological infrastructure of the study area was constructed, and the safety and health units were created on the basis of the ecological substrate to prevent and respond to public health emergencies. The results show that the stormwater resilience enhancement approach based on Eco-DRR can effectively alleviate the flood risk of Jiangchuanlu Street. At the same time, the safety and health units created through the ecological infrastructure can also help to prevent and respond to public health emergencies. The results of this study provide a resilience enhancement approach for sponge cities based on Eco-DRR, as well as a theoretical reference for the planning and construction of safe and resilient cities.

Promoting the green development effect characterized by green total factor productivity (GTFP) is the key to achieving high-quality development in the new era. Using the 2001?2021 inter-provincial panel data, the energy and environmental factors were simultaneously included in the analysis framework for assessing the green effect of environmental regulations in China. The Malmquist-Luenberger index based on the SBM directional distance function was used to measure the GTFP and its decomposition terms, the dynamic panel model was further constructed, and the GMM method was used to empirically test the direct and indirect effects of three types of environmental regulation and foreign direct investment (FDI) on GTFP. The results show that China’s GTFP is growing at an average annual rate of 2.13%, green technology progress is the source of GTFP growth, and the GTFP regional gap is expanding. There is not a non-linear effect in command-controlled environmental regulation, while the economic incentive type and the voluntary agreement type of environmental regulation respectively show a “U” shaped relationship and an inverted “U” shaped relationship. The control type regulation does not have an indirect effect on GTFP through FDI, but the incentive type and protocol type regulations can drive the promotion of GTFP indirectly through FDI. The GTFP lifting effects of the different types of environmental regulation and FDI show regional heterogeneity. Exploring the green development effect and characteristics of environmental regulation has important theoretical significance and practical value for selecting rational environmental regulation types, adopting differentiated environmental regulation intensities, implementing two-wheel drive to boost GTFP growth, realizing the benign interactions between environmental regulation and FDI, and ultimately promoting high-quality economic development.

Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) have been grown and used extensively for health care and healing practices since time immemorial in Nepal. They possess cultural, religious and economic values in Nepalese communities. In recent years, the MAPs sector is a growing commercial sector in Nepal that provides livelihood opportunities for low income generating people especially in the Himalayas. In this regard, this study assesses the contribution of MAPs to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Karnali Province of Nepal. A total of 58 species of MAPs were identified in Karnali Province. It was found that various parts of these annuals, biennials and perennial plants have been used as medicines, perfumes and food. MAPs in Karnali Province generated economic output equivalent to NPR 160738 million (USD 1.39 billion) or 1.03% of GDP of Karnali Province and 0.02% of the National GDP in the fiscal year 2019/2020. However, the findings revealed that the current GDP estimate undervalues the contribution of the MAPs sector to the national GDP due to the non-inclusion of ethnobotanical uses of medicinal plants. Moreover, if all cash and environmental benefits people derive from this sector could be valued and recorded in the System of National Accounts, the GDP from MAPs would be much higher than the amount estimated in this study. We conclude that MAPs have a reasonable contribution to the GDP of Karnali Province and Nepal.

This study mainly examines the factors influencing mountain outdoor tourism development in light of the regional economy, human environment, infrastructure, talent services, and other aspects. It analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of mountain outdoor tourism development in the process of regional development by combining qualitative research with quantitative research, and puts forward corresponding sustainable development measures in combination with an actual investigation. These measures can provide certain guidance and practical information for the ultimate realization of mountain outdoor tourism in harmony with the residents, which is a win-win situation. Taking Siguniang Mountain as the research area, we adopted the methods of literature review, questionnaire survey and field interview, and used SPSS26 and Smartpls to construct a structural variance model for the related dimensional impact analysis. The results show that the attractants of a mountain outdoor tourism destination and the humanistic environment of the destination have a highly significant relationship with tourist satisfaction. Mountain outdoor tourism destination services and facilities have a low degree of significant relationships with tourist satisfaction. Among them, the path coefficient of outdoor tourism destination consumption in mountainous areas is close to 0, and the significance level is greater than 0.05, so the relationship between destination consumption and tourist satisfaction has not been affected. The correlation analysis of Smartpls showed that the tourist satisfaction of mountain outdoor tourism destinations in Siguniang Mountain is mainly affected by the cultural environment, tourism attractions and tourism facilities of the mountain outdoor tourism destinations. The analysis of the final results of the structural equation model indicated that the cultural environment and tourist attractions of the tourist destination have high positive significant relationships with the satisfaction of tourists, while the significance of the relationship between the facilities of the tourist destination and the satisfaction of tourists is weak, and the positive relationship between the service factors of the tourist destination and the satisfaction of tourists is also weak. Therefore, the functional relationship is “two strong, one weak and one weak”. Finally, suggestions are put forward for optimizing and improving tourist satisfaction from the aspects of human environment, infrastructure, talent services, and the comprehensive development of tourist destinations, which have a certain reference value for improving tourist satisfaction and the sustainable development of tourist destinations.

The investigation of carbon storage in ecosystems and its driving factors is crucial for understanding carbon cycling and achieving the goal of carbon neutrality. The grassland in the Northern Tibetan Plateau is an important grassland ecosystem in China, although the accurate estimation of its carbon stock and our knowledge of its spatial patterns and driving factors in the Northern Tibetan Plateau remain unclear due to insufficient field investigations. In this study, a dataset of 150 measured sample points on the Northern Tibetan Plateau, kriging interpolation and statistical methods were used to estimate the densities of aboveground biomass carbon, belowground root carbon and soil organic carbon at a soil depth of 30 cm, as well as to explore the spatial distribution and the main influencing factors of each carbon pool. The average carbon densities were 0.038 kg C m^-2 in aboveground biomass, 0.284 kg C m^-2 in belowground biomass, and 7.445 kg C m^-2 in the soil. The soil organic carbon accounted for 95.85% of the grassland carbon density. The total carbon storage of the grassland ecosystem in the Northern Tibetan Plateau was about 4.08 Pg C, with a decreasing trend from southeast to northwest. Of the total, the organic carbon stocks of vegetation and soil were 0.58 Pg C (including the aboveground and belowground biomass) and 2.58 Pg C, accounting for 28.29% of the total vegetation carbon and 26.60% of the total soil carbon, respectively, on the Tibetan Plateau, with the remainder stored in the bare land. While the precipitation, temperature and soil texture all affected the ecosystem carbon storage, precipitation played the most significant role and the combination of these three factors explained up to 86.47% of the aboveground carbon density. The aboveground carbon pools in grassland ecosystems of the Northern Tibetan Plateau were most sensitive to climatic factors, while the spatial patterns of belowground and soil carbon storage were more complex. This study provides a spatially accurate assessment of the carbon storage in the grasslands on the Northern Tibetan Plateau.

Studies of species habitat and distribution patterns are an important prerequisite for conservation efforts, and habitat quality and integrity play a crucial role in the population health and recovery of endangered species. This is especially applicable to the snow leopard, a top predator that is key to highland mountain ecosystems. In this study, 112 valid snow leopard distribution loci obtained by infrared camera surveys in the mid-eastern Tianshan, Xinjiang were examined. Combined with 12 characteristic environmental variables, the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) and GIS techniques were used to analyse the potential distribution areas and suitable habitats of snow leopards in the mid-eastern Tianshan. The results showed that the total area of suitable habitat for snow leopards in the mid-eastern Tianshan was 15919 km², and the most suitable habitat was mainly concentrated in a western patch around Wusu, Hutubi, and the southern mountains of Urumqi. The results of a Jackknife analysis showed that land cover type, the daily difference in average temperature, isothermality, slope, and altitude were important factors affecting the distribution of snow leopards. Deciduous coniferous forests, grasslands, and bare rock areas with sparse vegetation at altitudes from 2500 m to 5000 m are the areas where snow leopards have a higher probability of occurrence in the mid-eastern Tianshan. This study determined the key distribution areas of snow leopards and provides a scientific basis for establishing key areas for snow leopard monitoring and protection in the mid-eastern Tianshan.

Revealing the mechanism by which land use influences ecosystem service function in karst urban watersheds is of great significance for social and economic development and ecological environmental protection. In this study, the Nanming River Basin, a typical karst basin in Guizhou Province, was used as an example. The spatiotemporal dynamic changes in land use in the basin during three periods from 2000 to 2020 were analyzed using ArcGIS, and the ecosystem service functions of the different land use types in the basin were evaluated using an integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs (InVEST) model. This analysis led to three outcomes. (1) Forest, cultivated land, and grassland make up most of the land uses. The land use change was mostly dependent on the growth of construction land, which expanded by 13.07%. (2) The watershed's water conservation function was significantly boosted during the study period. In contrast, the carbon stock function became slightly impaired, and the physical quality of both was regionally distributed as high in the northeast and low in the southwest. (3) The contributions of forest to total water conservation and carbon stock of the watershed are always the greatest, exceeding 57%, and the conversions of forest to construction land and cultivated land to forest are the two primary types of land use change in which the ecosystem service function was impaired and strengthened, respectively. The results of this study can provide important data support and scientific reference for land use structure optimization, soil and water resource exploitation, and sustainable ecosystem management in ecologically fragile areas.

Water conservation is a crucial functional aspect of ecosystem service. Revealing the temporal and spatial changes in water conservation and exploring the factors influencing those changes are of great significance for the utilization of water resources and the construction of ecological civilization. In this study, we estimated the water conservation changes in Jiangxi over the 20 years from 2000 to 2020 by the rainfall storage method. Thereafter, the GeoDetector was applied to analyze the contributions from various factors, including climatic variations and ecosystem transformations, to the changes in the water conservation. The results showed three important trends. (1) From 2000 to 2020, farmland, grassland, water and wetland dominated the northern part of the Poyang Lake Basin except for the forests. The transformations of ecosystem types in the study area mainly occurred between forests, farmland and towns in the 20 years. During this period, the urban area showed a significant increase of 92.63%, while the other ecosystem types showed decreasing trends. (2) The province’s water conservation function declined from 2000 to 2020, with a total loss of 97.11×10⁴ m³ km^-2, and in the study area it is characterized as high in the east and west and low in the middle. (3) Factorial analysis showed that the changes in the water conservation were not caused by any one factor alone. The q values of ecosystem type change interactions with the changes in annual precipitation, annual temperature and sunshine hours calculated by the GeoDetector were 0.555, 0.541 and 0.501, respectively. Therefore, the interactions between factors contributed 50% more than the single factors in affecting the changes of water conservation.

The High-Altitude Bhagirathi Valley (HA-BV) in Garhwal Himalaya is a region of significant ecological and cultural importance, which is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Community-based approaches to climate change adaptation (CB-CCA) have emerged as an important strategy to build resilience and sustain the local community's economic and social well-being. This paper aims to examine the CB-CCA and livelihood security initiatives in HA-BV, focusing on the strategies implemented to address the challenges posed by climate change. The paper analyzes the successes and challenges of these approaches and contributes to the discourse on sustainable development in the Himalayan region. The study findings can inform future efforts to build climate resilience and livelihood security in similar contexts. This research demonstrates the potential of CB-CCA to enhance the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities and provides insights into the co-benefits of sustainable development and climate resilience in HA-BV.

The construction and operation of onshore wind farms interfere with the succession of local plant communities, and the impacts on the local ecology and climate are of great concern. The study of the relationships between onshore wind farms and local ecology and climate, as well as the accurate assessment of the impacts of onshore wind farms on local areas, are the foundation for promoting the sustainable development of green energy. In this study, we summarize the existing research methods used for field data monitoring, remote sensing data inversion and numerical model simulation, and found that onshore wind farms have obvious impacts on the local vegetation index, near-surface temperature, wind speed, soil moisture, and other parameters. Onshore wind farms reduce the local soil moisture content, increase the near-surface air temperature, and significantly alter local wind speeds. They also cause a reduction in the local vegetation index, inhibition of plant growth, and an increase in the mortality rates of birds and bats inside the wind farms. However, onshore wind farms have positive effects on the plant communities outside the wind farms, especially in the downwind direction. Overall, there is regional variability in the results and the findings are not generalizable. The mechanisms by which the onshore wind farms influence the local climate, the impact of climate on local ecology, and the direct effects of onshore wind farms on local ecology have not been clearly and accurately explained. Related research is still needed to further improve the precision, accuracy, and continuity of observational data. The construction of modeling systems also needs to incorporate indicators such as land use type, local microclimatic indicators, and plant species. Based on these considerations, this review provides support for macroscopically understanding the impacts of onshore wind farms on climate and ecology.

The high-quality development of culture and tourism is an important path for promoting the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, urban-rural integration and development, and realizing common prosperity. This special issue focuses on the major issue of “rural revitalization and high-quality development of culture and tourism”, and contains 22 academic papers with in-depth discussions on five themes: “Rural revitalization and rural tourism high-quality development”, “rural tourism destination and homestay development”, “tourism environmental behavior and farmers’ participation in tourism”, “tourism resilience and tourism risk”, “cultural tourism and tourism high-quality development”. This collection of articles has three characteristics: Rich research areas and diverse research objects; diverse research methods that are inventive, logical, and scientific; and diverse theoretical viewpoints that span several disciplines. Considering the shortcomings of the current research, it puts forward future research directions such as strengthening localized theoretical research, expanding research areas and perspectives, and further deepening and enriching the research contents. In addition to supporting China’s efforts to promote high-quality culture and tourism, as well as comprehensive rural revitalization, this special issue can offer theoretical directions and actual experience in these areas.

The green production of food currently faces the challenge of technological shortage. As agricultural technology services are an important source of technical knowledge for farmers, it is of great significance to explore how agricultural technology services influence the efficiency of green food production in order to improve its productivity. This study utilized data from the China Land and Economy Survey (CLES). Firstly, the three-stage DEA model was used to calculate the efficiency of green food production. Secondly, the generalized random forest model was used to empirically test the impact, heterogeneity, and pathways of agricultural technology services on the efficiency of green food production. This study found that: (1) Agricultural technology services have a significant positive impact on the efficiency of green food production. Among the stages, pre-production and mid-production agricultural technology services significantly improve the efficiency of green food production. However, post-production agricultural technology services do not show a significant impact. Additionally, the combination of agricultural technology services has a significant improvement effect on the efficiency of green food production. (2) The marginal effects of resource allocation by farmers have heterogeneity in terms of the impact on the efficiency of agricultural technology services in improving green food production. An increase in the proportion of the family agricultural labor force and the expansion of family-operated arable land scale significantly reduce the returns of agricultural technology services. (3) An analysis of mechanism variables showed that agricultural technology services mainly affect the efficiency of green food production through pesticide and fertilizer usage behavior, and significantly contribute to its improvement. The government should expand the scope of agricultural technology services and fully utilize their potential to improve the efficiency of green food production. Tailored strategies and policies should be implemented to guide the concept of green production during the provision of agricultural technology services, thereby promoting sustainable agricultural practices among farmers.

Satellite remote sensing provides the changes information of Earth surface on large spatial scale in a long time series and has been widely used in ecology. However, the possible impact from human activities generally occurs on a smaller spatial scale and could be detected in a longer time, which requires the remote sensing data having the both higher spatial and temporal resolution. Meanwhile, the development of the spatiotemporal data fusion algorithm provides an opportunity for the requirements. In this paper, based on deep learning, we proposed a residual convolutional neural network (Res-CNN) model to improve the fusion result considerably with brand-new network architecture to fuse the NDVI retrievals from Landsat 8 and MODIS images. Experiments conducted in two different areas demonstrate improvements by comparing them with existing algorithms. The model performance was evaluated by a linear regression between predictions and observations and quantified by determination coefficients (R²), regressive ecoefficiency (slope). The two excellent models, ESTARFM and FSDAF, were compared with the new model on their performance. The results showed that the predicted NDVI had the higher exploitational on the variability in the Landsat-based NDVI with the R² of 0.768 and 0.807 at the urban and grassland sites. The predicted NDVI was well consistent with the observations with the slope of 1.01 and 0.989, and the R-RMSE of 95.76% and 93.58% at the urban and grassland sites respectively. This study demonstrated that the Res-CNN model developed in this paper exhibits higher accuracy and stronger robustness than the traditional models. This research is full implications because it not only provides a model on the spatio-temporal data fusion, but also can provide the data of a long time series for the management and utilization of agriculture and grassland ecosystems on the regional scale.

Wetlands are one of the most complex ecosystem types on the planet, and ecological sensitivity assessment is an important foundation for the scientific planning of wetland park systems. The Minjiang River estuary, located in the coastal city of Fuzhou, has outstanding regional characteristics in terms of its ecosystem and biodiversity. The nearby waters are among the richest in marine species in the world and the richest in offshore marine species at that latitude in the northern hemisphere. It has at least four indicators meeting the criteria for internationally important wetlands. In this study, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to determine the weights of factors, and the comprehensive ecological sensitivity of Minjiang Estuary National Wetland Park was evaluated using the weighted-overlap method by the Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS). An ecological sensitivity evaluation index system for wetland parks was constructed using Delphi, and then an ecological sensitivity assessment of Minjiang Estuary National Wetland Park was built. The sensitivities of different areas in the Minjiang Estuary National Wetland Park were divided five ecological sensitivity levels: extremely sensitive, highly sensitive, moderately sensitive, minimally sensitive, and insensitive. The results show that the riverbanks, beaches, canals, ponds, and surrounding areas were in the range of highly and moderately sensitive areas, while insensitive and minimally sensitive areas were distributed in the artificial landscape environments such as woodlands, farmland, and parks.

This study aims to survey the literature and factual evidence on the nexus between deforestation and agriculture through an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change in the context of the world, India, and the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats region was chosen for this study because of its deep ecological significance. A few underlying themes were created and findings were documented under each theme that ranged from the causes of deforestation, the transformation of forest land for agriculture, the nexus between agriculture, deforestation and climate change, climate-driven agricultural vulnerability and the reconciliation of forest protection with agriculture. These findings suggest that shifting agriculture has been a dominant source of deforestation. The primary climatic impacts on agriculture are seen through crop yield falls. India’s arid and semiarid tropical regions have witnessed high climate-driven agricultural sensitivity. This could be on account of the fact that India’s tropical forests have witnessed high deforestation. The presence of higher tree densities in areas under Joint Forest Planning and Management in the Western Ghats create the potential for sparing remaining land areas for non-forest uses such as agriculture.

Integrating the landscape pattern holistically and identifying priority areas for ecological restoration scientifically are the key challenges of national land space planning and ecological protection. Taking Xiushui County, a fragile ecological region in the south, as an example, this study established an evaluation index system based on the pattern-process principle, including the importance of ecosystem services and ecosystem sensitivity, and explored regional priority areas for ecological restoration through GIS spatial analysis technology. The results show that the ecological restoration priority area in the case study area is 2880.64 km² in total, covering 63.93% of the overall area. Of that amount, 367.55 km² is the bottom-line priority areas for ecological restoration, accounting for 8.16%. Regarding land use types within the major ecological restoration priority area, the arable land and construction land areas are 210.83 km² and 122.52 km², covering 55.35% and 51.43% of the overall area, respectively. Determining the priority areas at different levels can help decision-makers to prioritize the restoration needs of degraded areas and provide a basis for adopting targeted ecological restoration measures for areas with different degrees of degradation. Identifying priority areas also provides basic information for the protection and construction of the eco-security pattern of the territorial space, which is vital for improving the regional ecological environmental safety and building a harmonious community between humans and nature.

This study performs the time series analysis of agriculture land in the Nainital District of Uttarakhand, India. The study utilizes Landsat satellite images for the classification of agriculture and non-agriculture land over a time duration of 21 years (2000?2021). Landsat 5, 7 and 8 satellites data have been used to classify the study area with Random Forest classifier. The Landsat satellite images are processed using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The selection of Random Forest classier has been based on a comparative analysis among Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Classification and Regression Trees (CART). Overall accuracy, user accuracy and producer accuracy and Kappa coefficient has been evaluated to determine the best classifier for the study area. The overall accuracy for RF, SVM and CART for the year 2021 is 96.38%, 94.44% and 91.94% respectively. Similarly, the Kappa coefficient for RF, SVM and CART was 0.96, 0.89, 0.81 respectively. The classified images of Landsat in agriculture and non-agriculture area over a period of 21 years (2000-2021) shows a decrement of 4.71% in agriculture land which is quite significant. This study has also shown that the maximum decrease in agriculture area in last four years, i.e., from 2018 to 2021. This kind of study is very important for a developing country to access the change and take proper measure so that flora and fauna of the region can be maintained.

With the progressive aging of China’s population, the contradiction between the supply and demand of elderly care service facilities is increasingly prominent. This study takes Wuxi City as the research area, and evaluates the accessibility characteristics of the elderly service facilities in Wuxi City by using geographic statistics, buffer analysis, Gaussian two-step mobile search and other methods. It then analyzes the spatial distribution and supply and demand of the elderly service facilities in Wuxi City, and introduces the XGBoost algorithm to calculate the factors influencing the distributions of different types of elderly services. The results show that the distribution of home-based and institutional endowment resources in Wuxi is spatially heterogeneous, but there are problems of mismatch between supply and demand and uncoordinated regional development. The accessibility of endowment services varies greatly in different regions, and the number of hierarchical endowment institutions is relatively small. The distribution of community home care service stations is relatively more equitable, but still does not match the size of the elderly population. There are obvious differences in the factors affecting the distributions of nursing institutions and community home nursing service stations. The distribution of nursing institutions is affected by transportation infrastructure, the size of the elderly population, the number of medical resources, the environment, economic level and other factors; while community home care is mainly affected by the size of the elderly population. In order to better meet the elderly service needs of residents, Wuxi needs to increase its investment in elderly service facilities and take various measures to promote the development and improvement of its elderly service facilities.

Japanese communities associated with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) program have tried to develop tourism products that take advantage of their certification as a GIAHS site. As the experience economy is gaining more importance in society, tapping into tourism is a realistic choice for the communities that face aging and declining populations. In this study, we look at how stories (narratives) are attached to agricultural products and culture and identify issues in making experience-based products in GIAHS areas in Japan. We used an inductive approach to analyze qualitative data collected mainly by interviews and observations. For the analysis, we followed the standard analytical techniques, that is, searching for patterns of similarities and differences of transcribed data and refining ideas using diagrams. Field work was conducted in Oita GIAHS, Gifu GIAHS and Shizuoka Chagusaba GIAHS that represent all GIAHS types in Japan. This research shows that the landscape type of GIAHS can develop various souvenirs with different stories extracted from GIAHS certification documents from crafts to foodstuffs. On the other hand, in the farming method type of GIAHS, narratives are confined to a single agricultural product and its production method. Another finding is that two layers of narratives exist in the experience-based products in GIAHS areas. The first layer is created utilizing already known agricultural and cultural traditions in a locality. The second layer is a GIAHS story added to the first layer as a scientific reinterpretation of local agricultural heritage.

Based on the land use data of 2000, 2010, and 2018, ArcGIS, Fragstas, and GeoDa software were used to assess the spatial and temporal evolution of ecosystem service value (ESV) and landscape ecological risk (LER) in the Jinsha River Basin from 2000 to 2018. Their relationship was subsequently examined using bivariate spatial autocorrelation and spatial regression models. The results indicate three important aspects of this system. (1) Between 2000 and 2018, the woodland, grassland, water area, and construction land rose, while the cultivated land and unused land declined, among which the decrease in unused land and the increase in construction land were more prominent. (2) From 2000 to 2018, the value of ecosystem services in the study area increased by 73.09 billion yuan, from 2018.89 billion yuan to 2091.98 billion yuan, while the overall landscape ecological risk index decreased from 0.01029 to 0.01021. The areas occupied by both low-risk and high-risk areas increased, indicating that the ecological environment in the region as a whole has been improving. However, there are still localized areas with deteriorating ecological conditions. (3) There is a positive spatial correlation between landscape ecological risk and ecosystem service values in the study area, demonstrating a high-risk-high-value clustering characteristic, and the landscape ecological risk has a positive effect on the value of all ecosystem services, particularly the value of the regulation services. The findings of this study can be used as a guide for reducing regional ecological risks, enhancing ecosystem services, and enhancing the quality of the ecological environment in the basin.

This study takes Cangshan UNESCO Global Geopark as an example, which takes the connection between tourism and economic departments as the starting point, adopts appropriate tourism development methods, and determines that tourists are one of the most important stakeholder groups in tourism development. Based on this, this study aims to explore the tourists’ cognition and support for the sustainable tourism development of Cangshan Global Geopark. In this study, a self-administered questionnaire survey method is used to construct the tourist satisfaction evaluation model of Mount Cangshan, and the tourist satisfaction of various scenic spots in Mount Cangshan is calculated and evaluated. The characteristics, tendency and purpose of tourists are studied. This result provides an effective reference for strengthening the construction of the characteristics of Cangshan scenic area and the management of tourists’ complaints. It can also help Cangshan scenic area plan tourism arrangements more reasonably, improve social service level and provide tourists with “zero defect” tourism products.

Green development is the coordinated development of the economy, society and environment and has become a mainstream development model. This paper evaluates the green water resource utilization efficiency (GWRUE) of 38 regions in the four-city area in central China during 2010-2019 using a super-slacks-based measure (super-SBM) DEA model considering unexpected output. Then, the spatiotemporal variations in GWRUE are analyzed by the standard deviational ellipse method, and the geographical detector method is employed to reveal the dominant impacts and interaction impacts on GWRUE spatiotemporal variations. The results show that: (1) From 2010 to 2019, the GWRUE in the four-city area in central China was low, and the difference among regions was obvious, showing a downward trend. (2) From 2010 to 2019, the spatial gravity center of GWRUE experienced a change process from northeast to southwest, and its moving speed showed a “waveform” rising trend. Moreover, the standard deviational ellipse (SDE) range of each characteristic time point showed a decreasing trend, indicating that the spatial variations in GWRUE tended to be agglomerated. (3) From 2010 to 2019, the influence of each factor on the spatial variations in GWRUE was different each year. In addition, the two-way interactions between different influencing factors were mainly manifested as bivariate enhancement relationships and nonlinear enhancement relationships and were especially affected by multiple factors that produce a nonlinear enhancement interaction. This study can provide a practical basis for realizing water ecological civilization construction and high-quality development in the four-city area in central China.

The Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) is one of the important megafaunas in protected areas of the Terai (lowland) region of Nepal. They often encounter humans and their livelihood-supporting activities in the proximity of forest boundary within the protected area. The human-elephant conflict has been one of the major issues in the human settlement close to the protected area, which has caused economic losses and poised a threat to human lives every year. The issue has obstructed sustainable management initiatives within the protected areas. The objective of the study is to analyze the cause of the human-elephant conflict in the Buffer Zone of Bardiya National Park and to assess people’s perception of this megafauna. The structured questionnaire survey was done in three municipalities within the Buffer Zone of Bardiya National Park. Besides, key informants’ interview was done to supplement the questionnaire survey. The result shows that 93% of the respondents have been a victim of elephant attacks in the past three years. Last year, on average, each household lost approximately NRs 9690 (USD 1 = NRs 132.72) worth of stored harvest due to the elephant attack. Most of the attack occurs during the season between July to September, followed by the season between October to December. It also indicates that the preference of elephants for crops is the primary cause of elephant attacks/raids in the study area. The second important cause of the elephant attack is insufficient food base which is followed by the expansion of agricultural fields towards the forest. Ninety percent of respondents react to the elephant attack by chasing them (using fire or noise). Fifty-one percent of respondents accept the human-elephant coexistence because of their biological and economic values. However, 40% of them reject the coexistence because of the threat posed by the elephant upon the local people and their livelihood. Human-elephant conflict hinders the management campaign and therefore has to be resolved through collaboration of the protected area, the local people and the administrative stakeholders. It is suggested that more study has to be made to acknowledge the pattern of residing as well as migrating elephants around forest boundaries and adjacent settlements.

In this study, we applied an innovative trend analysis (ITA) technique to detect the annual and seasonal trends of solar photovoltaic resource potential (R_s) in East Asia during 1961-2010 based on the Global Energy Balance Archive (GEBA) data. The Mann-Kendall (M-K) trend test and linear regression method (LRM) were compared with the ITA technique. The results showed that the annual R_s in China presented a significant decreasing trend (D<-0.5 and P<0.01, where P is the P-value and D is the trend indicator of ITA) using these three techniques. The seasonal R_s generally showed a significant decreasing trend (D<-0.5) using the ITA technique in China, however, a slightly increasing trend was observed in Japan. The R_s values were further divided into four groups (“low”, “moderate”, “high” and “very high”) to detect the sub-trends using the ITA technique. The results indicated that the decreasing annual R_s in China was mainly due to reductions in the “high” and “very high” R_s values. The most probable causes of the trends in the variation in China were the decreasing sunshine duration and increasing anthropogenic aerosol loadings; while the trends in Japan were probably driven by the increasing sunshine and declining cloud optical thickness. Moreover, the similarities and differences between the M-K test and ITA technique results were compared and evaluated, and the ITA technique proved to be superior to the M-K test.

Reservoirs are artificial wetlands with functions such as flood control, water supply, improving livelihoods and regulating the ecological environment. Taking the plants of Sifeng Mountain Reservoir in Jiamusi City as the object of investigation, we studied and analyzed the diversity of plant resources in the reservoirs, aiming to provide a basis for the conservation and use of plants in the reservoirs and the ecological restoration of artificial wetlands. The field trekking method, literature research method, and sample method were used to study the reservoir plant resources in terms of their life types, ecological types, distribution types and plant communities. The survey found 175 species, 137 genera, and 56 families of plants around the Sifeng Mountain Reservoir, including 2 species under National Grade II status. The predominant plant families are Compositae and Rosaceae, while the main plant genus is Artemisia L. Among the six life types, perennial herbaceous plants are dominant, with 86 species, accounting for 49.14% of the total plant population. The ecotype is dominated by mesophytes (118 species), followed by wet plants (56 species) and aquatic plants are the fewest, with only one species. The type of distribution area is clearly temperate. The 16 sample plots were divided into six communities based on species importance, with the plant communities showing a distribution of patches with varying sizes.

To deeply reach target markets and attract more tourists, a variety of media have been leveraged by tourism destination marketing organizations, particularly video games become a brand-new approach for destination marketing. With Assassin’s Creed: Unity as the research object, based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model, this article analyses and presents the influences of tourism destination factors in video games on the players’ perception of tourism destination image and their intention to visit. In this case, a conceptual model has been built with game factors as the independent variable, tourism destination image as the mediating variable and the players’ intention to visit as the dependent variable. Moreover, Multiple Regression is used in the analysis, proving significantly positive effects of game experience, character attachment, and tourism destination image on players' intention to visit. Consequently this study provides research support for the combination of tourism destination marketing and video games.

Soil erosion monitoring in coastal mountainous areas is very important during the construction of Electric-Transmission-Line (ETL) because of the impact this disturbance has on the sensitive environment. In this study, high-resolution remote sensing data and deep learning models including Dense and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) were used to fit the popular soil erosion equation, which is called the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), for the Min-Yue ETL (in Fujian). The accuracy of soil erosion regression was then evaluated in the transmission line buffer area and sampling spots at two spatial scales in order to obtain the optimized parameters and a suitable model. The results show that the Dense and LSTM models can meet the accuracy requirements by using 10 characteristic values, including soil erodibility, annual rainfall, mountain vegetation index (NDMVI), DEM, slope, four bands gray values of high-spectral image, construction attributes. The optimized parameters for the priority machine-learning model LSTM are as follows: the layer depth is 3, the layer capacity is 512, the dropout ratio is 0.1, and the epoch of the LSTM model is 7060. The regression accuracy of the LSTM model decreases with an increase in soil erosion levels, and the average regression accuracy is greater than 0.98 for the slight level of soil erosion. Therefore, the machine-learning model of LSTM can be applied for quickly monitoring the soil erosion using high resolution remote sensing data.

The compensatory effect and deep impact of the fruit tree economic forest on water and soil conservation ecology in a semi-arid region are investigated by exploring the ecological service value and ecological functions of the fruit tree economic forest, and further by analyzing its functional effects on reducing water and soil loss, conserving water and soil, conserving the water source, improving environmental quality and maintaining biodiversity. This analysis provides a theoretical basis and support for coordinating the relationship between economic and social development, ecological protection, agriculture and forestry in the semi-arid area of the Loess Plateau; promoting the systematic management of mountain, water, forest, farmland, lake grass and sand; and promoting the ecological protection and high-quality development of the whole Hulu River Basin. According to the Standards for Evaluation of Forest Ecosystem Service Function (GB/T38582-2020), the forestry industry standard of the People’s Republic of China, the current market method, shadow price method, opportunity cost method, Swedish Carbon Tax law and other methods were adopted. The main functions of the fruit-tree economic forest ecosystem and its eco-economic value in the Hulu River Basin in Pingliang City were quantitatively analyzed, and the existing measured data from domestic ecological stations were combined with quantitative analysis and qualitative evaluation. The calculations included the ecological service values of the fruit tree economic forest ecosystem in water conservation, soil conservation, carbon sequestration, oxygen production, nutrient accumulation, environment purification and biodiversity protection, and the dynamic change characteristics of the ecological function quantity corresponding to its value were systematically analyzed. (1) In the four developmental stages of the fruiting economic forest in the Hulu River Basin in Pingliang City, the ecological function service value showed an increasing trend. Among the stages, the total value contribution of the first stage (2005-2009) is 1.299×10¹⁰ yuan; the second stage (2010-2013) is 2.497×10¹⁰ yuan; the third stage (2014-2017) is 2.662×10¹⁰ yuan; and total value contribution of the fourth stage (2018-2020) is 2.774×10¹⁰ yuan. (2) In the composition of the ecological functional service value of the fruit tree economic forest, the value of water conservation is the highest, accounting for the largest proportion at 32.97% of the total value of ecosystem services. Therefore, it plays an important role in regulating the hydrological balance of the basin in the arid and semi-arid region of the Loess Plateau. The function value of the purifying environment is relatively small, accounting for only 0.19% of the total value, followed by the function value of species conservation, accounting for 5.42%. In order of service value, the ecological function values of water conservation, oxygen release, carbon sequestration, nutrient accumulation, soil conservation, fertility maintenance, species conservation and environment purification accounted for 32.97%, 25.94%, 11.63%, 11.34%, 6.37%, 6.14%, 5.42% and 0.19% of the total value, respectively. The conclusions of this study are basically consistent with other domestic studies. Compared with the annual output value of fruit trees in the same period, the total value of ecological services was 2.42 times of the annual output value of the fruit. Therefore, the fruit tree economic forest not only provides a large amount of fresh fruit products and creates tremendous economic and social benefits for the people, but it also provides a major increase in ecological service value, and the contribution of local GEP is greater than that of GDP. (3) After accounting, the water conservation amount of the fruit tree economic forest (2005-2020) in the Hulu River Basin in Pingliang City was 2.586×10⁹ m³, with 2.135×10⁹ t of soil fixation, 2.264×10⁵ t of fertilizer retention, 9.568×10⁶ t of carbon fixation, 2.562×10⁷ t of oxygen production, 9.278×10⁵ t of nutrient accumulation, and 1.137×10⁵ t of environmental purification function (and within that function, the amount of sulfur dioxide absorbed is 94656.02 t, the amount of fluoride absorbed is 1793.82 t, the amount of nitrogen oxide absorbed is 6406.50 t, and the amount of dust fall is 10794.95 t), and the amount of negative ions provided is 1.564×10²⁵, which greatly regulates and improves the ecological environmental quality of the region.

Given the high degree of fragmentation and poor resistance to disturbance in karst landscapes, it is important to clarify the spatial and temporal dynamics of landscape patterns in karst areas when designing karst ecological protection strategies. Using the Li River Basin as the study area, the spatial distribution and dynamic evolution of landscape patterns in the basin were analyzed at the levels of landscape utilization, landscape type dynamics and landscape pattern indices based on the Landsat series images for 2000 to 2020 obtained from the GEE platform as the data source. The results show three important aspects of this typical karst watershed. (1) There are large differences in landscape structure and landscape type trends between the karst and non-karst areas in the Li River Basin. (2) The comprehensive landscape type dynamic attitude of the Li River Basin is 0.22%, and the composite index of landscape type use varies from 239.49 to 244.88. The degree of landscape use is higher in karst areas than in non-karst areas, and the rate of landscape change in karst areas is more intense. The integrated index of landscape use in karst areas ranges from 262.32 to 270.50, and in non-karst areas it spans 225.28 to 227.01. The integrated landscape type motility in the karst areas is 0.31%, which is about twice as high as that in non-karst areas. (3) The overall landscape evolution of the Li River Basin shows trends of increasing fragmentation, decreasing connectivity, decreasing dominance and increasing heterogeneity, and these trends are particularly prominent in the karst areas. The results of this study can provide a scientific basis for realizing the construction goals of the National Sustainable Development Innovation Demonstration Zone in Guilin, and a technical reference for the ecological environmental management of the karst watershed.

Revealing the dynamic characteristics of the temporal and spatial evolution of electricity power consumption (EPC) is of great significance for realizing the scientific allocation and rational utilization of electricity power resources. Therefore, based on the EPC data extracted from the DMSP/OLS nighttime light data, this paper takes the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as an example, and uses various methods such as coefficient of variation, Kernel density analysis, rank-scale rule, trend analysis, and standard deviation ellipse. The evolution characteristics of the spatiotemporal pattern of EPC at the provincial, prefecture and county levels in the YREB were analyzed. The results show that: (1) Through the coefficient of variation (CV), we found that the coefficient of variation (CV) of EPC in the YREB showed a downward trend at the provincial, prefecture and county levels. Specifically, the county-level EPC has the largest difference, followed by the provincial and prefecture-level. (2) Through the kernel density analysis, we found that the EPC agglomeration degree in the YREB obviously shows the characteristics of decreasing from the east to the central and western regions. (3) Through the rank-scale rule, it is found that the |q| value of the YREB has been in a downward trend during the research period at the provincial, prefecture and county scales, and the |q| value is constantly approaching 1. It directly shows that the scale and quantity distribution of EPC in the YREB at the provincial, prefecture and county levels are becoming more and more reasonable. (4) Through trend analysis, we found that the changes in EPC in the YREB at the provincial, prefecture and county scales all obviously showed a decreasing trend from the east to the central and western regions. (5) Through the standard deviation ellipse (SDE), we found that the standard deviation ellipse of the EPC in the YREB obviously shows the spatial distribution direction of “Southwest-Northeast”, and the directionality to the Yangtze River Delta is very obvious, which directly indicates that the promotion of the YREB that the main driving force behind the growth in EPC is the increase in EPC in the east-west direction.