China and the United States are both countries with huge carbon emission, and the volume of trade between them is large. Due to the differences in natural resources, technology, equipment and energy use efficiency, there is a large carbon emission transfer from the United States to China by Sino-U.S. merchandise trade. This paper adopts the input-output analysis method, and combines the systems of economy, energy consumption and trade to establish a carbon emission transfer model based on international trade. And then it calculates the carbon emission transfer by Sino-U.S. merchandise trade in 1997 and 2002. The conclusions are as follows: (i) In 1997 and 2002, the total carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors by exporting merchandise to the U.S. reached 40.1013 Mt C (million tonnes of carbon equivalent) and 50.5621 Mt C, accounting for 6.61% and 8.33% of total carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors; while the total carbon emissions of the United States’ industry sectors by exporting merchandise to China were 2.9065 Mt C and 3.3561 Mt C, accounting for only 0.53% and 0.66% of the total carbon emissions of the United States’ industry sectors; (ii) In 1997 and 2002, the carbon emission transfer from the United States to China by Sino-U.S. merchandise trade reached 37.1975 Mt C and 47.1960 Mt C. Specially, the contributions of chemical industry, metal smelting and pressing sector are prominent; (iii) In 1997 and 2002, there were equivalent to 6.77% and 9.32% of the United States’ industry sectors’ total carbon emissions transferred to China. China has made part of contribution to carbon emission reduction for the United States. Developed countries such as the United States should provide climate-friendly and environment-friendly techniques to developing countries such as China.

Ecosystem services related to water supply are now a hot topic in ecology and hydrology. Here, water supply service in the Lancang River basin was evaluated using the newly developed model InVEST. We found the mean annual water supply in Lancang River basin is approximately 7.24E+10 m³ y^-1 with 23.87% from main stream and 76.13% from the tributaries. There is an increasing trend downstream. Grasslands and forests contribute 71.66% of the total water. A comparison of water supply capacity per unit area for ecosystems of different composition indicates that there is a decreasing trend from broadleafed forest, mixed coniferous and broad-leafed forest, bamboo forest, coniferous forest, shrub forest and grassland. Two-thirds of the total water is provided by an area covering 40% of the total basin area. This study provides guidelines for the efficient management of water resources in the Lancang River basin.

Energy consumption is one of the main human activities driving global climate change, and therefore research on the carbon footprint of energy consumption is of great significance. In this paper, concepts and methods relating to the carbon footprint of energy consumption were used to calculate total carbon footprint, carbon footprint of each type of energy, output value of the carbon footprint and its ecological pressure from 1990 to 2009 in Gansu Province, northwestern China. The ridge regression function within the STIRPAT model was applied to study the quantitative relationship between carbon footprint and economic growth and at the same time verify the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. A decoupling index was introduced to further explore the dynamic relationship between economic growth and carbon footprint. We found that the total carbon footprint increased from 0.091 ha per capita in 1990 to 0.191 ha per capita in 2009 and followed a fluctuating rising trend. Coal and oil occupy the dominant position within the carbon footprint composition, while natural gas is of little effect. The output value of the carbon footprint increased from 11 800 CNY per ha in 1990 to 25 100 CNY per ha in 2009, representing an average annual growth rate of 4.1%. The ecological pressure intensity of the carbon footprint increased to 0.24 in 2009, and remains much lower than developed provinces Jiangsu and Shanghai, due to the vast area of woodland in Gansu. Development of a low-carbon economy in Gansu remains hindered by limited energy, a fragile ecological environment and irrational energy structure. Population and GDP per capita growth were the main factors driving the increasing carbon footprint; the impact of population is 3.47 times of that of per capita GDP. Regression analysis and decoupling index analysis have proved the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve for economic growth and carbon footprint, but 33 years are required to reach the inflection point.

Process mechanisms of carbon storage and carbon cycle in earth system are the scientific foundation for analyzing the cause of climate change, forecasting the climate change trend, and making mitigation and adaptation countermeasures, which have attracted great attention from the scientific community and international community. Since the late 1980s, Chinese scientists have carried out a great deal of research on the terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle, and have made great progress in many fields. In this paper, we review the history of the research on the terrestrial carbon cycle in China, summarize the results of the carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems and its spatial patterns, evaluate the uncertainties of the research, and put forward important scientific issues which are needed to be addressed urgently. Overall, the research on the carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystems in China consists of four stages of development, i.e., the early carbon cycle research, the comprehensive study on the carbon cycle at regional scale, the experimental research on the adaptation of ecosystem carbon cycle to climate change, and the coupling cycles of C-N-H2O and the regional regulation and control. Most studies indicate that carbon storage of terrestrial ecosystems in China and its spatial pattern are controlled by temperature and precipitation. About 97.95–118.93 Pg carbon is stored in soil, forest and grassland in China. Since the mid 1970s, many management measures such as afforestation and forest management, grassland protection, farming system reformation and conservation tillage, have played important roles in carbon sequestration. However, large uncertainty exists among the evaluation results with various methods. In the future we should focus on the integrated monitoring system of the dynamics of carbon storage and carbon sink, foresight studies on the coupling cycles of ecosystem C-N-H2O and its regional regulation and control, quantitative assessment on the carbon budget and the potential of carbon sink of ecosystems in China, the evaluation of the economic benefit of various technologies for increasing carbon sink of typical ecosystems, and the measurable, reportable and verifiable scientific data and technical supports for establishing the policy framework of greenhouse gas management and carbon trading at national scale.

Based on reference review, this study investigated ecosystem services supported by 10 typical rice paddies in six rice planting regions of China. The services were primary production, gas regulation, nitrogen transformation, soil organic matter accumulation, and water regulation and flood control. The results indicated that grain production of the 10 rice paddies was between 4.71 and 12.18 t ha^-1 y^-1; straw production was 4.65 to 9.79 t ha^-1 y^-1; gas regulation was calculated to emit O₂ ranging from 8.27 to 19.69 t ha^-1 y^-1 and to assimilate greenhouse gases ranging from -2.13 to 19.24 t ha^-1 y^-1 (in CO₂ equivalent); nitrogen transformation was estimated as nitrogen input ranging from 209.70 to 513.93 kg N ha^-1 y^-1 and nitrogen output of 112.87 to 332.69 kg N ha^-1 y^-1; soil organic matter accumulation was calculated to be between 0.69 and 4.88 t C ha^-1 y^-1; water regulation was estimated to consume water resources of 19875 m³ ha^-1 y^-1 and to support water resources of 6430 m³ ha^-1 y^-1; and flood control of several of the rice paddies was calculated to be 1500 m³ ha^-1 y^-1. The integrated economic value of ecosystem services of these rice paddies was estimated at USD 8605-21 405 ha^-1 y^-1, of which 74%-89% of the value can be ascribed to ecosystem services outside primary production. The results also indicated that the integrated economic value of the ecosystem services of the 10 rice paddies was higher when nitrogen fertilizer was applied in the range of 275 to 297 kg N ha^-1. Until now, the economic value of the rice paddy ecosystem has been underestimated as only the economic value of grain and straw production was previously calculated. As more and more forest land and grassland is lost to urban and industrial use, cropland and especially rice paddies, will become more ecologically important to society. The economic value of ecosystem services supplied by rice paddies, outside primary production, are worthy of increased research attention.

Valuation of global ecosystem services by R. Costanza（1997）has attracted attention of the Chinese ecological researchers over the years. Many Chinese scientists have been using the methods to valuate the ecosystem services for forest, grassland and farmland ecosystems. However, it has been turned out that there are several shortcomings in direct adaptation of the methods, for instance, some ecosystem services have been insufficiently valuated or even ignored. To meet this gap, we have used a “unit value” based method for assessment of ecosystem services. Expert interviews with structured questionnaire have been contacted in 2002 and 2007 respectively; altogether 700 Chinese ecologists have been involved in the interviews. It has been found that the values of ecosystem services from expert knowledge based unit value method and biomass based method are comparative. Therefore, expert knowledge based assessment of ecosystem services could be used as a method for the assessment with known land use areas, and a good result could be generated within a short time period. However, for scientifically sound and concrete results, a long term simulation of ecosystem service flux curve via experimental research is required, and spatial and temporal disparity of ecosystem services should be taken into account.

Forests play an important role in mitigating climate change by absorbing carbon from atmosphere.The global forests sequestrated 2.4±0.4 PgCy^-1 from 1990 to 2007, while the quantitative assessment on the carbon sequestration potential (CSP) of global forests has much uncertainty.We collected and compiled a database of site above-ground biomass (AGB) of global mature forests, and obtained AGB carbon carrying capacity (CCC) of global forests by interpolating global mature forest site data.The results show that:(i) at a global scale, the AGB of mature forests decline mainly from tropical forests to boreal forests, and the maximum AGB occurs in middle latitude regions; (ii) temperature and precipitation are main factors influencing the AGB of mature forests; and (iii) the above-ground biomass CCC of global forests is about 586.2±49.3 Pg C, and with CSP of 313.4 Pg C.Therefore, achieving CCC of the existing forests by reducing human disturbance is an option for mitigating greenhouse gas emission.

Mining activities produced a lot of abandoned mine land. This paper introduced the theoretical and technical progress of ecological restoration of surface coal mines, mining subsidence land and coal waste piles in China and discussed some key problems for research in the future. Ecological restoration of abandoned mine land was related to many disciplines, and multi-disciplinary theories might make great contributes to it. Some practical techniques of ecological restoration of abandoned mine land and their demonstration bases in China were introduced. Ecosystem succession process and mechanism, structure optimization of land use and new technologies of ecological restoration of abandoned mine land should be focused on in research activities.

From the viewpoints of population, resources, environment and economic-social development, we establish the models of accounting for resource and environmental costs and coordinated (or relative coordinated) development degrees between economic growth and resources and the environment using the evaluation method of ecosystem service value. Synergistic effects between regional economic growth and resources and the environment in the Yangtze River Economic Zone was analyzed and driving forces were analyzed by regression of partial least squares. We found that from 1983 to 2012, resource and environmental costs in the Yangtze River Economic Zone (including seven provinces and two municipalities) increased from 4736.55 trillion CNY to 15 359.45 trillion CNY and corresponding weights dropped from 31.1% to 19.7% compared to the national level. The degree of coordinated development rose from 0.295 to 1.506, higher than the national average. In the years 1983, 1993 and 2003, the main factor that drove the coordinated development of regional economic growth, resources and the environment was low level resource and environmental costs. With continuous increases in primary and tertiary industrial added values after 2012, the advantage of the Yangtze River Economic Zone has weakened. In the future, provinces should improve the rules and regulations on planning and implementing main functional areas, promote adjustment of industrial structure, restore ecology, improve resource utilization efficiency and reduce environmental loss costs to enhance quality of economic development and promote the coordinated development of regional economic growth and resources and the environment.

Water yield calculation and mapping are of great importance to water resource planning and management and hydropower station construction. A water yield model based on InVEST was employed to estimate water runoff in the Xitiaoxi River basin. The data included land use and land cover, average annual precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, soil depth, and plant available water content. In order to test model accuracy the natural runoff of Xitiaoxi River was estimated based on linear regression relation of rainfall-runoff in a ‘reference period’. After repeated validation, when the Z value was 6.5 the water yield was 8.30 E+8 m³ and this was a smaller difference with natural runoff. From the distribution of water yield, south and southwestern areas of the watershed had higher water yield volumes per hectare.

In the context of “two-wheel drive” development mode, China’s construction land shows significant expansion characteristics. The carbon emission effect of construction land changes is an important factor for the increase of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. In this study, the drivers of carbon emissions in Anhui Province from 1997 to 2011 were quantitatively measured using the improved Kaya identity and Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index. The results show that: economic growth, expansion of construction land and changes in population density have incremental effects on carbon emissions. The average contribution rate of economic growth as the first driver is 266.32 percent. The construction land expansion is an important driving factor with annual mean carbon effect of 6.4057 million tons and annual mean contribution rate of 187.30 percent. But the change in population density has little impact on carbon emission driving. Energy structure changes and energy intensity reduction have inhibitory effects on carbon emissions, of which the annual mean contribution rate is -212.06 percent and -158.115 percent respectively. The targeted policy approaches of carbon emission reduction were put forward based on the decomposition of carbon emission factors, laying a scientific basis to rationally use the land for the Government, which is conducive to build an ecological province for Anhui and achieve the purpose of emission reduction, providing a reference for the research on carbon emission effect of changes in provincial-scale construction land.

Aiming at the difficulties of controlling on potato late blight, maize northern and southern leaf blight diseases caused by the overlapping of rainfall and peak of these diseases in mountainous area of Southwest China, intercropping of potato with maize by adjusting planting time and spacing to avoid rainfall and disease occurrence was assessed. The results showed that early or late planting of potato, avoiding rainfall peak from potato vigorous growth and increasing light and air diffusion in space, alleviated potato late blight disease. The average severities decreased by 44.3% for potato late blight, 14.8% for maize northern leaf blight and 22.5% for maize southern blight, compared with the monocropped controls. Moreover, this kind of intercropping pattern improved the output significantly. The crop yields were increased and reached a land equivalent ratio (LER) of 1.738 for early planting pattern and 1.766 for late planting. This approach can be practical significance for ecological control of crop disease and food production increase. The agroecological structure in harmony with the natural environment results in ecological and cycle agriculture with high yield, high quality and high efficiency.

Considerable efforts have been undertaken to accelerate the breakdown of existing anthropogenic petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) by appropriate in situ remediation technologies. In situ phytoremediation, using higher plants to remove, stabilize, degrade, and/or metabolize hazardous contaminants, has emerged as a promising green technology for cleaning up environments contaminated with PHCs. Weed plants are generally considered to have great potential for use in phytoremediation due to their extensive fibrous root systems and relatively robust characteristics, thus helping establish a strong rhizosphere through contaminated soils. In this review, some important mechanisms involved in phytoremedation of PHC contaminated soils, including phytoaccumulation, phytostabilization, phytodegradation, phytovolatilization, and rhizodegradation, were summarized and discussed. In recent years, a large number of laboratory approaches have been developed to further enhance the phytoremediation efficiency of PHC contaminated soils. The success of these laboratory studies has encouraged researchers to attempt phytoremediation of PHC contaminated soils in the field. However, many limitations still exist in order to successfully apply laboratory experiments to trials in the field.

This paper illustrates the spatial variations in urban resource and environmental efficiency (REE) amongst 285 cities in China using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, and examines the factors that have had the greatest effect on this spatial pattern by regression models. The results gave an average urban REE of 0.6381, and an average pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE) of 0.6964 and 0.9225, respectively. The results support the existence of a U-shaped relationship between REE and income level, which means that an increase in urban GDP does not result in an equivalent increase in environmental efficiency. Economic growth affects REE in three ways: scale effects (population scale and urbanization rate); composition effects; and spatial effects. Improvements in urban resource use and environmental efficiency depend upon both technological innovation and effective governance. Policies designed to achieve these improvements should therefore be implemented at all levels of government and local enterprise.

Nitrate contamination has become one of the most important issues for surface water and groundwater. N₂O, with an increasing contribution to global warming, has been more and more attention by the IPCC recently. As well known, denitrification plays a major role in nitrogen cycle of aquatic ecosystems and operates at rates far below its potential under proper conditions. Sediments are the single largest pool of nitrogen in wetland ecosystems. During this process, facultative anaerobic bacteria transform nitrite into nitrogen gas which dissolves in the groundwater and diffuses into the atmosphere finally when it shows up with seepage or spring in the wetland. To seek a mechanistic understanding of N removal in natural wetland ecosystem, a case study was carried in terms of denitrification rate at the Ochi catchment, Chiba, Japan. In this study, samples of intact soil cores in 0–20cm were taken along the groundwater flow path, which including 2 samples in the unsaturated zone and 2 in saturated wetland ecosystem. Denitrification capacity of soil was quantified using acetylene (C₂H₂) inhibition/gas chromatography ECD method with time intervals of 0, 2, 6, 12, 24 h. Total-N and Total-C contents and amount of denitrifying bacteria were also analyzed. It is found that denitrification ability is low for all 2 samples in the unsaturated zone and high in saturated zone. Results show that N₂O emission flux after C₂H₂-inhibition ranges from 0 to 1.17 gN m^-2h^-1, with an increase value prior 6 hours and slow down after that.

An ecotone is a transition area between two biomes or two different ecosystems and are often fragile, sensitive and variable. Since the 1970s, the study of the ecotone has increasingly gained notoriety as an important facet of ecological research. China, with a vast complex geology, climate and vegetation, is home to a variety of ecotones. This variety is witnessed in breeds, scales and sizes. This vast array has not only laid a solid foundation for scientific research but also enhanced China’s economic development, social development and cultural diversity conservation. According to the geographical distribution and ecological features of China’s large scale ecotone, “The trinity index system” has been established including land use types, natural climate characteristics and agricultural economic development to classify and define the spatial distribution of typical ecotones in China. Based on this classification, the natural environmental characteristics, environmental fragility and the existing problems of five kinds of typical ecotones have been studied. This study will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary patterns of ecotones.

Though drought is a recurrent phenomenon in the Jinghe watershed, very little attention has been paid to drought mitigation and preparedness. This article presents a method for the spatial assessment of agricultural drought risk in the Jinghe watershed of western China at a 1-km grid scale. A conceptual framework, which emphasizes the combined roles of hazard and vulnerability in defining risk, is used. The Z index method in a GIS environment is used to map the spatial extent of drought hazards. The key social and physical factors that define agricultural drought in the context of the Jinghe watershed are indentified and corresponding thematic maps are prepared. Risk is calculated by the integration of hazard and vulnerability. Results show that the risk gradient follows a north-south and west-east tendency and that agricultural droughts pose the highest risk to northern and northwestern sections of the Jinghe watershed.

Grassland in northern Tibet plays an important role in the eco-security of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the restoration of deserted and degraded grassland is now a focus for governments. We used remote sensing, simulations and field surveys to analyze the current status, trends and causes of grassland degradation across northern Tibet. We develop several recovery models for degraded grassland based on field experiments in the region. We found that slightly degraded grassland covers 62% and that moderate to severely degraded grassland occupied 15.1% in the Chang Tang Plateau. The amount of degraded alpine steppe increased from 1991, and the amount of area classified as severely degraded increased sharply from 2000. The cause of degraded steppe in northwestern Tibet may be the result of warming and an arid climate; the cause of severe degradation in mid and eastern regions was mainly from overgrazing. Three restoration models are proposed for different levels of degradation: “enclosures” for slightly degraded areas, “enclosures with fertilization” for moderately degraded areas, and “enclosure with oversowing and fertilization” for severely degraded areas.

Some Tibetan villages in Shenzha county, Tibet were chosen as typical Tibetan communities in China. Attitudes and perceptions towards Tibetan community participation in ecotourism were analyzed using face to face interviews. Most residents supported the development of ecotourism. They are willing to engage in ecotourism projects and accept ecotourism education and training, and expect that the government provides opportunities for them to participate in making ecotourism decisions. Most residents believed that ecotourism promotes local economies and social development, and enhances the ability and quality of local residents while improving their environmental consciousness. However, some residents were concerned that ecotourism may destroy local natural environments and Tibetan folk customs and culture. The level of community participation in ecotourism development is only in its infancy in Shenzha, but there is strong potential. The chief participatory approaches of ecotourism development for most residents were providing labor and catering services and commodities for tourism, and Tibetan performance singing and dancing. Limiting factors include language, a shortage of knowledge and skills, and poor ecotourism infrastructure. Most residents had little confidence that the government was willing to support them to participate in ecotourism. We put forward some mechanisms to enhance the level of community participation in ecotourism in this important region.

Water quality evaluation is important because it could provide guidance when determining water utility. But many interacting impact factors are involved in water quality evaluation systems, making water quality evaluation difficult. Principal component analysis (PCA) is widely used in water quality evaluation because it can eliminate the correlation among factors. However, PCA ignores the degree of data dispersion, which is considered by information entropy (IE). To solve this problem, a model combined PCA and IE methods to obtain the weights of indicators is proposed in this paper, and the proposed model was applied to assess the reused water quality of Jinshui River in Zhengzhou City in 2009. The evaluation results were compared with those using PCA and IE methods for the same data. The results proved that the method is feasible and practical, and it can provide a theoretical basis and decision reference for the utility of unconventional water.

China is severely impacted by desertification. Of its territory, 34.6% — some 3.32 million km² — is classified as drylands¹⁾ (including arid, semi-arid and semi-humid arid areas). Of the drylands, 2.62 million km² meets the UNCCD definition of desertified land. These desertified lands spread across 18 provinces and account for 27.33% of the country's landmass. Over 400 million residents are affected, causing an annual direct economic loss exceed 64 billion CNY. China’s desertification mitigation began in late 1950s. Through a number of high-profile programs – “Three-North Shelterbelt Development Program”, “National Program on Combating Desertification”, “Sandification Control Program for Beijing and Tianjin Vicinity”, and “Croplands to Forests or Grasslands Program” launched between 1978 and 2000, the Government of China has poured on average 0.024% of the country’s annual GDP into desertification mitigation and, as a result, some 20% of desertified lands have been brought under control. Approximately 50×10⁴ km² of the existing desertified lands are considered restorable given current technology. When the potential desertification increments induced by global warming are taken into account, total desertified area within planning horizon is projected to range from 55×10⁴ to 100×10⁴ km². With the approximate restoration rate of 1.5×10⁴-2.2×10⁴ km² y-1, China’s anti-desertification battle is expected to last 45-70 years. The current strategic plans set restoration targets at 22×10⁴ km² by 2015, with an additional 33×10⁴ km² by 2030, and the final 45×10⁴ km² of the 100×10⁴ km² restored by 2050. Through examining state investment in mitigation and current rehabilitation strategies, the paper recommends: (i) boardening the previous sectoral perspective to a multi-stakeholder approach; (ii) setting priority zones within the restorable area, and establishing National Special Eco-Zones; (iii) steering state investment from government investment in tree plantations to acquisition of planted/greened areas; and (iv) introducing preferential policies in favor of sandy land restoration, including extending land tenures to 70 years and compensating for ecological services.

Ecosystem management is an ecological approach to the sustainable development of the nature rubber industry.Hainan is selected as an example to present a basic model of natural rubber industry ecosystem management.Based on the systematic analysis of structure and function of natural rubber industry ecosystem, we discuss the basic principles, management steps and management approaches of natural rubber industry ecosystem management.The goal of this paper is to provide the theoretical basis and practical guidance for healthy and sustainable development of the natural rubber industry ecosystem.

Yongding River, as the mother river of Beijing city, has been dried up from Sanjia Dian since 1980s. The naked riverbed and the desertification of its both sides play a main role of sandy weather in spring of Beijing. The Quaternary period underground water of the west Beijing has been drained off, because of the overload of the underground water plus with no supply pouring into. The ecological system of Yongding River has severely been devastated. If we want Yongding River to be recovered, we should clarify the quantity of the most active and the most important water. This paper calculated the instream ecological flow in three monitored sections of Yongding River Guanting Reservoir with wetted perimeter method. The three sections are Guanting Reservoir (under dam), Yanchi and Lugou Bridge. Respectively, the flows in the instream of each section are 3.7 m3 s-1 (the normal flow year, P=50%, 1978 ) accounting for 20.7% of the average annual flow, 4.1 m3 s-1（the normal flow year, P=50%, 1981）accounting for 20.1% of the average annual flow and 1.3 m3 s-1（the normal flow year, P=50%,1978）accounting for 22.1% of the average annual flow. If the supplies are according to the calculated flows, Yongding River will return back from it. Still according to the Tennant method, the Yongding River will maintain a health situation.

Species richness and diversity indices (Shannon-Wiener index, Simpson dominance index and Pielou evenness index) in alpine grassland ecosystems (alpine meadow, alpine steppe and desert steppe) under grazing-excluded and freely grazed sites were investigated along the Northern Tibetan Plateau Alpine Grassland Transect during summer 2009 and 2010.We found that species richness and diversity have not been significantly altered by short-term grazing exclusion since 2006 at vegetation and regional scales.Species richness and diversity were mainly driven by growing season precipitation (GSP), which accounted for over 87% of the total variation observed.Species richness and diversity at grazing-excluded and freely grazed sites appear to respond to growing season precipitation in parallel.Species richness exponentially increased with GSP while diversity indices showed positively linear relationships with GSP.This indicates that GSP on the Northern Tibetan Plateau is crucial in regulating species richness and diversity and should be taken into account in future studies on alpine grassland conservation.

A total of 224 animal manures and feeds,randomly sampled from different sizes of intensive farms in three northeastern provinces,were analyzed to determine Cu concentration.At the same time,the load of animal manure Cu on farmlands and loss to rivers in sewage irrigation areas of Liaoning Province was estimated.The results showed that the mean Cu concentrations in pig,cattle,and chicken feeds were 179.8,16.6 and 20.8 mg kg^-1 ,respectively.Cu concentrations in manures ranged from 1.5 to 1521.2 mg kg^-1 .The mean value of 642.1 mg kg^-1 in pig manure was higher than the mean values of 65.6 mg kg^-1 and 31.1 mg kg^-1 in chicken and cattle manures,respectively.The load of animal manure Cu on farmland in the study area ranged from 12.3-35.4 kg km^-2 annually.In particular,the Xiaolinghe area received a higher level than the other areas.The possible amount of manure Cu entering river water as a result of soil erosion was lower than 0.76 kg km^-2. The highest loss rates were found in the south of Anshan and the west of Jinzhou.It is suggested that animal manures contain a high level of Cu.Long-term agricultural application of animal manure may increase the potential risk of Cu pollution in soil and surface water.

One of the legacies of the time honored agricultural development in China has been varied farming practices that adapt well to different natural conditions.These old but still functioning farming systems continue to inspire us to find solutions to various environmental problems caused by so-called modern agriculture.This paper reviewed the studies on agricultural heritage in China,including two categories: document-based researches and practice-oriented researches on dynamic conservation and adaptive management of these traditional agricultural heritages.Studies on the history and archaeological findings about the Chinese traditional agricultural heritage have laid a solid foundation for any further study. Dynamic conservation and adaptive management of agricultural heritage was promoted by the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(GIAHS)project initiated by FAO in 2002.Until now,researches on the conservation and adaptive management of agricultural heritages have touched on many aspects of the issue,including theoretical consideration of agricultural heritage,agrobiodiversity characteristics of agricultural heritage,multi-values of agricultural heritage dynamic conservation,substitutive industries, legislation and institutionalization for the conservation of agricultural heritage.We conclude the paper with an agenda for future studies on agricultural heritages,including the broadening of the research scope,innovative research methodologies and methods and the development of strategies that combine conservation and utilization of agricultural heritages.

The Angstrom-Prescott formula is commonly used in climatological calculation methods of solar radiation simulation. Fitting the coefficients is carried out using linear regression and in recent years it has been found that these coefficients have obvious spatial variability. A common solution is to divide the study area into several subregions and fit the coefficients one by one. Here, we use ground observation data for sunshine hours and solar radiation from 1961 to 2010. Adopting extraterrestrial radiation as the initial value, Angstrom-Prescott coefficients are obtained by Geographically Weighted Regression at a national scale. The surfaces of solar radiation are obtained on the basis of the surfaces of sunshine hours interpolated by high accuracy surface modeling and astronomical radiation; results from spatially nonstationary and error comparison tests show that Angstrom-Prescott coefficients have significant spatial nonstationarity. Compared to existing research methods, the method presented here achieves a better simulation effect.

In 2012 the Ministry of Agriculture of China launched a project exploring Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (China-NIAHS). Through two rounds of applications and selection in 2012 and 2013, 39 traditional agricultural systems were selected and designated as China-NIAHS, including 19 forestry systems, 14 planting systems, four agricultural complex systems and two other systems. From a system origin perspective there were 24 agricultural systems, some dating back 1000 years. Twenty heritage systems are located in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. Agricultural heritage systems face general challenges, such as ecosystem degradation and destruction, loss and abandonment of traditional agricultural technologies and landscapes, lagging agriculture scale and industrialization, and limited farmer benefit-sharing and incentives. Compared to other types of heritage, the conservation and development of agricultural heritage systems is more complex and difficult. In order to achieve sustainable development of agricultural heritage systems, the government should play a leading role and improve financial support functions. Local people should also explore market-oriented approaches and adaptive management methods on protection and development of NIAHS. Multi-participation and benefit-sharing mechanisms should be established and basic research needs to be strengthened.

The South-to-North Water Transfer (SNWT) Project is one of the four largest trans-boundary projects in China. With the construction and operation of the project, increased attention has been paid to the risk factors which are induced by the uncertainties. The analysis and management of integrated risk are also put before the project managers. It is extremely important to reduce and control the integrated risks involved in the operation of the project. In this study, Baoying Station on the eastern route of the SNWT Project was chosen as the study area, and Bayesian Network (BN) theory is used to evaluate the probability of the integrated risks. Based on the reasoning of BN, the final integrated risk probability of Baoying Station is estimated to be 0.025% and the risk level is “lower level”. Analysis of the scenario shows that the probability of integrated risk is most severe when management and maintenance conditions of the pump in use deteriorates. More attention should be paid to this important risk factor during the operation of the project.