Ecological Footprint Dynamics of Yunnan, China

A fundamental element of sustainable development is that humans live within nature's biological capacity. Quantifying this, however, remains a significant challenge for which there are many emerging tools. The concept of the Ecological Footprint is one such accounting tool for comprehensive assessment of the status of sustainable development, based on integration of resource consumption and land capacity, reflecting the human impact on the environment. A region's development is defined as unsustainable when the Ecological Footprint surpasses the biological capacity. In this paper, the Ecological Footprint concept was applied in assessing the development of Yunnan Province, China in a period between 1988 and 2006. The results showed that the Ecological Footprint per capita in Yunnan rose from 0.854 gha in 1988 to 2.11 gha in 2006. Ecological deficit, defined as when the human demand on the land surpasses the regions biological productive capacity, emerged in 1991 and quickly increased from 0.02 gha in 1991 to 1.05 gha in 2006. The increase in the ecological deficit is primarily a result of the rapid increase in population and consumption level. To achieve sustainable development in Yunnan, production and consumption rates need to be modified.

Resource and Environmental Quality Changes and Adjustment Principles for Sustainable Development in Rapidly Developing Coastal Region of Southeastern China

Problems in water-land resources and environmental quality increase with the fast economic development in the coastal region of southeastern China. This region has the highest density in population, industry and towns in China, and the large export-oriented economy makes itself a strategic importance while China enters into international markets. The problems facing to this region include arable land reduction, land degradation aggravation, high percentage of built-up land with high rate of expansion, expanded non-point pollution, deteriorated water quality, decreasing biodiversity, destroyed ecosystems, severe air pollution, frequently occurred acid rain, and multi-pollutants. The important research fields in the near future should include a) influence of high-intensity exploitation of resources on changes of environment quality and its feedback; b) interface processes, key mechanisms and adjustment principles for degradation of water-, land-, and air-resources and environmental quality; c) evolvement processes and nurturing theory of biodiversity and ecological resources; and d) spatio-temporal variation and human-induced effects on regional resources and environment quality. Strategies for sustainable development in the region are as follows: a) controlling to ensure basic cultivated land area; b) enforcing remediation of polluted water environment, and controlling non-point pollution; c) strengthening ecological construction and ecological security; and d) controlling multi-pollution and preventing trace toxic pollutants.

Use of Farmers’ Indicators to Evaluate the Sustainability of Cropping Systems on Sloping Land in Yunnan Province, China

Diversity in the biophysical and socio-economic attributes of agricultural systems makes them uniquely niche based. Farmers are expert in local biophysical and socio-economic situations and can contribute in developing pragmatic indicators of agro-environmental development. During evaluation of an agricultural research project in Yunnan, China, local farmers were capable of evaluating the effects of modified technologies on existing cropping systems and discussed their attitudes to the interventions using their own indicators. Farmers＇ response can be grouped into seven major aspects： i） effects on income, ii） effects on production resources, iii） effects on crop management, iv） existing local knowledge about the technology, v） availability of inputs, vi） access to information, and vii） socio-economic conditions of farming households. Farmers concluded that environmental conditions in the experimental catchment in comparison to an adjacent untreated catchment were better in terms of soil and water losses, vegetation cover and natural resources, infrastructures and catchment management, use of environmentally-friendly technologies, and crop productivity. Success in soil and water conservation programmes depends on the efforts of the farmers and other local users and their greater involvement helps to identify more pragmatic indicators. Furthermore, it increases ownership of the programme, enhances interactions with the project scientists, increases farmers＇ awareness of ago-environmental problems and their possible consequences. These development will enable scientists to develop better targeted interventions and increase the likelihood of adoption of tested technologies by local communities. The use of paired adjacent catchments improved evaluation activities and is proposed as good practice for future catchment improvement programmes.

Statistical Analysis of Tropical Disturbances over the South China Sea During 1997-2006

Tropical disturbances over the South China Sea (SCS) during the period of 1997-2006 are analyzed using the Tropical Storm and Hurricane WX products. A total of 158 tropical disturbances were formed over the SCS from 1997 to 2006, with 54 de-veloping tropical disturbances which developed into tropical depressions and 104 non-developing tropical disturbances which never developed into tropical depressions. The development rate of tropical disturbances into tropical depressions was 34.18% in these ten years. During the period of this study, total annual numbers of tropical disturbances and developing tropical disturbances over the SCS had significant decreasing trends; however, the development rate of tropical disturbances had an insignificant increasing trend.

Monitoring of reclamation-induced ground subsidence in Macao (China) using PSInSAR technique

The long-term reclamation-induced ground subsidence in Macao, a coastal city of southern China was investigated. Persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) technique was applied to retrieve the deformation rate in Macao during the period from April 2003 to August 2010 with a total of 41 scenes of descending ASAR data sets. The PSI-retrieved results show a relatively stable pattern in Macao Peninsula, Taipa Island and Coloane Island, with an average subsidence velocity of -3 mm/a. In contrast, relatively large subsidence rates are highlighted in Cotai area, a new reclamation land in 1990s, in which an average subsidence velocity is about -10 mm/a. A consistent relationship between the PSI results and the leveling measurements indicate that this PSI technique is an effective tool to monitor the reclamation-induced ground subsidence with a high accuracy and adequate spatial details. Accordingly, the valuable ground subsidence results generated by PSI can be used not only for early detection and remedial activities of potential settlement of building, but also for helping the local government to formulate regional sustainable development planning and decision-making in disaster prevention and mitigation.

Differentiation and restructuring-new space for development of urban center area:a case study of Shizhong District of Ji'nan City

Taking the development tendency of current world industrial development as the background, this paper restructures the internal space of urban center area by illustrating reasons for internal space differentiation of urban center area, that is to say, according to the tertiary industry interior's high-end of value chain after convergence among the primary, the secondary and the tertiary industries, the space structure of urban center area will form the space development mode with characteristic modern service industry cluster districts through vertical segmentation, horizontal derivatization and block aggregation and realize perfect space renewal of urban center area in the end.

The best way of bilateral special economic zone to Sino-Vietnam economic cooperation

The Bilateral Special Economic Zones is a new idea about economic co-operation ways. It is going to be set by both countries with a common boundary for promoting the economic co-operation between two sides. It can be firstly set along the boundary between China and Vietnam. It will promote the economic co-operation between them, but China and ASEAN. It can be set along the Chinese boundary with the neighboring countries and will promote the economic co-operation between the both sides for setting up a better environment around China.

Small-Scale Household Biogas Digesters as a Viable Option for Energy Recovery and Global Warming Mitigation--Vietnam Case Study

Biogas from livestock waste is considered as clean and renewable energy in Vietnam. In the last 20 years, in rural and remote areas of Vietnam, there has been a significant increase of small-scale household biogas digesters. Biogas digesters create the benefits of replacing energy and mitigation of climate change caused by greenhouse gas （GHG） emission and deforestation for firewood and charcoal. Livestock waste produces approximately 85 million tonnes every year and continues to increase, meaning there are huge feedstocks for biogas digesters to meet the energy demands in households. However, there are also many constraints on the development programme for small-scale household biogas digester. In Vietnam, the socio-economic situation and the lack of a sustainable energy policy for biogas from livestock sector are hindering the growth of the biogas digester industry. Government subsidies are needed to encourage farmers to participate. This paper will be helpful not only for the sustainable development of household biogas in Vietnam, but also for the developing program of biogas generation in developing countries with similar agricultural economies to Vietnam.

Climate change regionalization in China(1961–2010)

Since climatic condition is the important foundation for human subsistence and development and the key factor in sustainable development of economy and society, climate change has been a global issue attracting great attentions of politicians, scientists, governments, and the public alike throughout the world. Existing climate regionalization in China aims to characterize the re gional differences in climate based on years of the mean value of different climate indexes. However, with the accelerating climate change nowadays, existing climate regionalization cannot represent the regional difference of climate change, nor can it reflect the disasters and environmental risks incurred from climate changes. This paper utilizes the tendency value and fluc tuation value of temperature and precipitation from 1961 to 2010 to identify the climate change quantitatively, and completes the climate change regionalization in China （1961-2010） with county administrative regionalization as the unit in combination with China＇s terrain feature. Level-I regionalization divides China＇s climate change （1961-2010） into five tendency zones based on the tendency of temperature and precipitation, which are respectively Northeast China-North China warm-dry trend zone, East China-Central China wet-warm trend zone, Southwest China-South China dry-warm trend zone, Southeast Ti- bet-Southwest China wet-warm trend zone, and Northwest China-Qinghai-Tibet Plateau warm-wet trend zone; level-lI region- alization refers to fourteen fluctuation regions based on level-I regionalization according to the fluctuation of temperature and precipitation.

Modeling the impacts of policy interventions from REDD+ in Southeast Asia: A case study in Indonesia

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation(REDD+) and enhancing "removals of greenhouse gas emissions by forests" in developing countries through positive incentives is regarded as an essential component of the post-2012 climate regime for stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions and an important way of engaging developing countries in global mitigation efforts. We aimed to evaluate the potential effectiveness of REDD+ by integrating it into a land use option framework. One of our goals was to develop scenarios for evaluating the impacts of land use changes on carbon and environmental processes. In addition, we aimed to quantify the potential economic benefits to society of compensated reductions and to identify hotspots for applying REDD+. Three land use change scenarios were examined:(I) business as usual(BAU),(II) economic development, and(III) REDD+. A case study in Indonesia was examined using these land use scenarios and policy interventions, evaluating their effects on carbon emissions, socioeconomics, and environmental features of a spatial system using land use models. Significant emissions and water erosion reductions were predicted to be achieved under the REDD+ scenario, due to reduced deforestation of <6% over the next decade; >0.14 Mt CO2 e reduction was predicted relative to the BAU scenario. Furthermore, the spatial land use model indicated that REDD+ payments of forest carbon credits in the compliance market would play a key role in compensating rural communities and plantation companies for their opportunity cost in ending deforestation. This study provides an example of integrating land use modeling with a scenario analysis framework to evaluate plausible future forecasts and to evaluate the potential impacts of REDD+.