Ecosystem health has attracted considerable attention from different disciplines in recent years. However, it still remains a disputed issue whether to focus on its general concept or on operational practice. As a res...Ecosystem health has attracted considerable attention from different disciplines in recent years. However, it still remains a disputed issue whether to focus on its general concept or on operational practice. As a result, these disputations have caused confusion and limited further research in the field of ecosystem health. In this paper, we attempt to introduce a new perspective to the concept of ecosystem health. With the aid of modern statistical methodology, such as factor analysis and normal distribution theory, we provide a conceptual approach to the quantitative assessment of ecosystem health and our method could be applied to various categories of ecosystems.展开更多
An integrated environmental accounting of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) is presented in this paper based on emergy analysis with data from 1987 to 2007. Through calculating environmental and economic i...An integrated environmental accounting of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) is presented in this paper based on emergy analysis with data from 1987 to 2007. Through calculating environmental and economic inputs and a series of emergy indicators, this paper discusses IMAR's resource use structure, economic situation, and trade status. The results show that more than 85% of the emergy used in IMAR was derived from home sources, indicating a strong capacity for self-sufficiency. Concentrate,J-used local non-renewable emergy, which provides IMAR economy with most of the driving forces, took the largest share in total emergy use after 2004 and reached 58% in 2007. The Western China Development Plan of 2000 ushered in a rapid growth of coal and electricity production and exportation to other regions of China from IMAR. The export/import emergy ratio of IMAR reached 3.46 in 2007, with the coal exported (3.44x1023 sej in 2007) without being used by IMAR itself, accounting for almost 100% of the difference between the imports and exports. The results also show that from 1987 to 1998, EmSI values remained higher than 10, sug- gesting underdevelopment in IMAR; after 1998, EmSI values decreased sharply from 19.07 in 1998 to 1.88 in 2007, indicating that IMAR is characterized by medium-run sustainability and is relying more on non-renewable resources and imports.展开更多
基金supported by National Key Technology R&D program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No.2007BAB23C03)sub-project of the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences(No .2007BAB23C03-01)
文摘Ecosystem health has attracted considerable attention from different disciplines in recent years. However, it still remains a disputed issue whether to focus on its general concept or on operational practice. As a result, these disputations have caused confusion and limited further research in the field of ecosystem health. In this paper, we attempt to introduce a new perspective to the concept of ecosystem health. With the aid of modern statistical methodology, such as factor analysis and normal distribution theory, we provide a conceptual approach to the quantitative assessment of ecosystem health and our method could be applied to various categories of ecosystems.
基金NASA's LCLUC Program,No.NN-X-09-AM-55GKnowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,No.KZCX2-EW-306China Scholarship Council
文摘An integrated environmental accounting of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) is presented in this paper based on emergy analysis with data from 1987 to 2007. Through calculating environmental and economic inputs and a series of emergy indicators, this paper discusses IMAR's resource use structure, economic situation, and trade status. The results show that more than 85% of the emergy used in IMAR was derived from home sources, indicating a strong capacity for self-sufficiency. Concentrate,J-used local non-renewable emergy, which provides IMAR economy with most of the driving forces, took the largest share in total emergy use after 2004 and reached 58% in 2007. The Western China Development Plan of 2000 ushered in a rapid growth of coal and electricity production and exportation to other regions of China from IMAR. The export/import emergy ratio of IMAR reached 3.46 in 2007, with the coal exported (3.44x1023 sej in 2007) without being used by IMAR itself, accounting for almost 100% of the difference between the imports and exports. The results also show that from 1987 to 1998, EmSI values remained higher than 10, sug- gesting underdevelopment in IMAR; after 1998, EmSI values decreased sharply from 19.07 in 1998 to 1.88 in 2007, indicating that IMAR is characterized by medium-run sustainability and is relying more on non-renewable resources and imports.