Division of carbon sink functional areas and path to carbon neutrality in coal mines

Remote sensing image data of typical mining areas in the Loess Plateau from 1986 to 2018 were used to analyze the evolution of land use,explore the division of carbon sink functional areas,and propose carbon neutrality paths to provide a reference for the coal industry carbon peak,carbon-neutral action plan.Results show that(1)land use has changed signifcantly in the Pingshuo mining area over the past 30 years.Damaged land in industrial,opencast,stripping,and dumping areas comprises 4482.5 ha of cultivated land,1648.13 ha of grassland,and 963.49 ha of forestland.(2)The carbon sink functional areas of the Pingshuo mining land is divided into invariant,enhancement,low carbon optimization,and carbon emission control areas.The proportion of carbon sinks in the invariant area is decreasing,whereas the proportion in enhancement,low carbon optimization,and carbon emission control areas is gradually increasing.(3)The carbon neutrality of the mining area must be reduced from the entire process of stripping–mining–transport–disposal–reclamation,and carbon emissions and carbon sink accounting must start from the life cycle of coal resources.Therefore,carbon neutrality in mining areas must follow the 5R principles of reduction,reuse,recycling,redevelopment,and restoration,and attention must be paid to the potential of carbon sinks in ecological protection and restoration projects in the future.

Effects of Agricultural Insurance on Poverty Alleviation under Uncertain Price of Agricultural Products

Poverty alleviation of the rural poor is the most arduous task in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in China, and agricultural insurance is an important financial tool for this task. Due to different capital levels, individual farmer will adopt production technology with different efficiency. In the case of uncertain price of agricultural products, this paper establishes a series of multiple equilibrium models based on agricultural risk and agricultural insurance. Under the catastrophe risk, the probability of falling into the poverty trap is calculated, and the effects of agricultural insurance on poverty alleviation are discussed respectively. It is found that agricultural insurance can effectively reduce the probability of falling into the poverty trap for the farmers whose initial capital is greater than a certain critical value. While the government subsidizes the premium of agricultural insurance by a certain proportion, the effect on poverty alleviation will be further improved.

A protective AAV vaccine for SARS-CoV-2

Dear Editor,Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2(SARS-CoV-2)has caused the COVID-19 pandemic,with more than 528 million infections and 6.2 million deaths.To fight against this rapidly spreading pandemic,prophylactic vaccines have been developed using different techniques,such as inactivated virus,messenger RNAs,recombinant proteins,and viral-vectored vaccines.However,rapidly spreading variants of SARS-CoV-2,such as alpha,beta,delta,and omicron variants,have been emerging.