Emergy analysis of paddy farming in Hunan Province, China： A new perspective on sustainable development of agriculture

The multi-functionality of paddy farming has become a hot issue recently. Paddy farming provides numerous ecosystem services that are crucial to human well-being. However, evaluation of the contribution of paddy farming to human well-being usually focus on its economic value, while its non-market services are usually ignored. Only evaluating the market profits or market relative benefits cannot reflect comprehensively the contribution of paddy farming to people＇s well-being. This will affect people＇s choices for or against paddy farming activities and people＇s opt for invest or not invest in it. A comprehensive evaluation of paddy farming can provide an important reference for the government and society to conserve the multi-functionality of paddy farming and achieve sustainable development. To this end, this paper reports a case evaluation of paddy farming in Hunan, the largest rice producing as well as rice yield province in China, and uses emergy theory to make a comprehensive evaluation for paddy farming. The emergy evaluation results of the paddy ecosystem in Hunan are as follows： in 2010, the input emergy of the paddy ecosystem in Hunan is 2.51E＋22 sej and the output emergy is 6.31E＋22sej. For the input emergy, the part from natural resources is 1.96E＋21 sej and the part from human society is 2.32E＋22sej; for the output emergy, the part from products is 2.22E＋22 sej, the part from impositive externality is 4.16E＋22 sej and the part from negative externality is –7.41E＋20 sej. Taking the non-market outputs into consideration, the gains from the human economic society＇s 1 $ input in paddy farming, emergy sustainability index（ESI） and emergy profit rate are respectively 2.73 $, 3.53 and 151.31%. If the evaluation leave out the non-market output, the three indexes are only 0.96 $,1.24 and 30.67%. The research results show that non-market services of paddy farming contribute significantly to human well-being. Therefore, in order to protect the multi-functionality of paddy farming and achieve the sustainable management,the government should take reasonable measures and make incentive plans.

Spatio-Temporal Service Analysis in Multi-Layer Non-Terrestrial Networks

In the advent of the 6G era, non-terrestrial networks (NTN) with expansive coverage are being increasingly recognized as a vital supplement to cellular networks for facilitating seamless communication. The intricate interplay between network performance and service quality necessitates a thorough investigation into the modeling and analysis of services for efficient construction of NTN.Previous studies on service analysis, predominantly focused on terrestrial networks,fall short in addressing the unique challenges posed by NTN,particularly those related to platform distribution and antenna gain modeling. This deficiency in research,coupled with the varying preferences of users for different network types, forms the basis of this study. This paper explores the spatio-temporal characteristics of services within a multi-layered NTN framework.In this context,the spatial distribution of the platforms is modeled using a binomial point process, and the antennas are characterized by a sectorized beam pattern. We derive the closed-form expressions for the association probability,the number of accessed users, and the arrival rate of services with certain delay requirements towards different types of NTN. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the influence of various parameters on the association probability, the number of accessed users, and the total arrival rate of services. The number of satellites can be determined to achieve the optimal system utility,balancing the accessed services, offloading effects, and launching costs. This initial investigation lays the groundwork for further theoretical progress in the service analysis and platform deployment of NTN.

Jitter analysis of real-time services in IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs and wired IP concatenated networks

It is challenging and significant to explore the impacts of non-real-time services on real-time services from the perspective of jitter. Most of current researches on jitter made too many mathematical hypotheses on networks and traffic. This paper puts forward a tandem queuing model to characterize the real communication scenario where heterogeneous services are served by IEEE 802.15.4 wireless sensor networks（WSNs）, and then the packets served successfully are fed to Internet protocol（IP） networks. By analyzing the contention access processes in IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs, the authors derive the departure processes of the two types of services, i.e., the arrival processes of IP networks. The IP network is modeled as a queuing system, in which the real-time service is forwarded accompanied by the non-real-time service. Investigating the jitter of real-time services is intractable. Therefore, this paper abstracts this problem as a dynamic queuing system evolving on a dynamic time interval. Referring the transient analysis method（TAM）, this paper obtains the queue length in a random time interval which is scaled by the arrival of real-time services. Queue length evolution is closely connected with the jitter. Benefiting from the derivation in probability generation domain, the jitter of real-time services is obtained.

Ecosystem service tradeoff between traditional and modern agriculture： a case study in Congjiang County, Guizhou Province, China

Besides crops, agriculture supplies all three major categories of ecosystem services （ES）. However, agriculture also supplies an array of ecosystem dis-services （EDS） that may harm other ecosystems. The flows of ES and EDS are directly dependent on the management of agricultural ecosystems. The traditional method of Chinese agriculture, which supports sustainable agriculture, has been proven to increase ES and reduce EDS. However, there is a lack of a detailed understanding of the ES and EDS associated with traditional agriculture, and also of differences between traditional and modem agriculture. In this study, an investigation was conducted on the ecosystem services （ES） and ecosystem dis-services （EDS） of traditional and modem agriculture in Congjiang County, Guizhou Province, China. Afterwards, the economic values of ES and EDS were quantified experimentally and calculated based on the market price. The results show that： the net economic value of traditional rice-fish agriculture was 3.31 x 104 CNY.haI （6.83 CNY = 1 USD as of July, 2009） and that of rice monoculture was 1.99 x 104 CNY.ha ~. Significant differences existed between traditional rice-fish and rice monoculture fields for their economic values of some ES or EDS. A benefit and cost analysis （BCA） model was used to adjust the conflict between the economic income and environmental loss from traditional and modem agricul- ture. The BCA model not only calculates the net income but also monetizes the EDS of the agricultural systems. The results showed that the net income of rice-fish agriculture was 1.94x 104CNY.ha-1 higher than that of rice monoculture. However, the benefit to cost ratio （BCR） of rice-fish agriculture was lower than that of rice monoculture, indicating that the traditional agricultural model was not the most optimized choice for farmers. The value of the rice-fish agriculture was much higher than that of the rice monoculture. Thus, when considering the benefits that rice-fish agriculture contributes to the large- scale society, these agricultural methods needs to be utilized. Furthermore, the labor opportunity costs were calculated and the comprehensive value of rice mono- culture was negative. Finally, the compensation standard was calculated based on the comprehensive benefit analysis. The lowest level was 1.09×103 CNY.ha-1, and the highest level was 1.21 × 104 CNY.ha-1.