This study chose major Chinese cities and used the creative model of Smart Low-carbon Strength Quotient (SLSQ) to investigate the level and state of urban smart low-carbon development. The results show that: (1) three main categories of smart low-carbon cities are found; namely, leaders with high SLSQ, steady ones with average SLSQ and lagging ones with low SLSQ; (2) the SLSQ level shows a spatial change trend of diminishing from the southeast to the northwest and differing within regions; (3) the SLSQ level indicates an urban scale change trend of decreasing from the big to the small and differing within each scale; (4) the SLSQ level suggests an administrative hierarchy change trend of descending from the high to the low and differing within each class; (5) based on the SLSQ, three dynamic patterns were identified: leading mode, steady mode and preparing mode, among which the steady mode accounts for the vast majority of smart low-carbon development in major Chinese cities.

Rangeland systems play an important role in ecological stabilization and the terrestrial carbon cycle in arid and semiarid regions. However, little is known about the vegetative carbon dynamics and climatic and topographical factors that affect vegetative carbon stock in these rangelands. Our goal was to assess vegetative carbon stock by examining meteorological data in conjunction with NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) time series datasets from 2001–2012. An improved CASA (Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach) model was then applied to simulate the spatiotemporal dynamic variation of vegetative carbon stock, and analyze its response to climatic and topographical factors. We estimated the vegetative carbon stock of rangeland in Gansu province, China to be 4.4× 1014 gC, increasing linearly at an annual rate of 9.8×10¹¹ gC. The mean vegetative carbon density of the whole rangeland was 136.5 gC m^-2. Vegetative carbon density and total carbon varied temporally and spatially and were highly associated with temperature, precipitation and solar radiation. Vegetative carbon density reached the maximal value on elevation at 2500–3500 m, a slope of >30°and easterly aspect. The effect of precipitation, temperature and solar radiation on the vegetative carbon density of five rangeland types (desert and salinized meadow, steppe, alpine meadow, shrub and tussock, and marginal grassland in the forest) depends on the acquired quantity of water and heat for rangeland plants at all spatial scales. The results of this study provide new evidence for explaining spatiotemporal heterogeneity in vegetative carbon dynamics and responses to global change for rangeland vegetative carbon stock, and offer a theoretical and practical basis for grassland agriculture management in arid and semiarid regions.

This paper uses the expected utility under risk hypothesis to develop a new approach to GIS modeling for land use suitability analysis with competitive learning algorithms (CLG—LUSA). It uses Kohonen’s Self Organized Maps (SOM) and Linear Vector Quantization (LVQ) among other tools to create comprehensive ordering of high number of options. The model uses decision makers preferred locations and environmental data to construct a manifold of the decision's attribute space. Then, decision and uncertainty maps are derived from this manifold. An application example is provided using the selection of suitable environments for coconut development in a municipality of Cuba. CLG—LUSA model was able to provide accurate visual feedback of key aspects of the decision process, making the methodology suitable for personal or group decision making.

As the major component of terrestrial ecosystems, forests play an irreplaceable role in providing ecosystem services and products (e.g. biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water yield and timber). Spatially quantifying ecosystem services and interactions will shed light on sustainable forest management. Main forest ecosystem services including carbon storage, water yield, soil retention and wood volume in the Ganjiang River Basin (GRB) were evaluated and mapped through the integrated use of InVEST3.1.0, CASA modeling and ArcGIS10.2, and relationships between forest ecosystem services and natural or social-economic factors were quantified and discussed based on ArcGIS10.2 and SPSS19.0. Results showed that the spatial pattern of the four ecosystem services is heterogeneous. Forests dominated by broad-leaved forest and bamboo forest in mountainous regions around the GRB provided the largest carbon storage and wood volume services, while forests dominated by Masson pine plantations or Chinese fir plantations in the northeast provided the largest water yield service. The spatial pattern of the soil retention service is more discrete than others, and forests in the southwestern regions showed larger soil erosion modulus than in the northeastern regions. Ecosystem services are closely related to the environmental process and human activities. With altitude or slope increases, the carbon storage and wood volume of forests increased and water yield depth and soil retention decreased. When the regional total population decreased or GDP per capita increased, carbon storage and wood volume increased. Further research into the interactions between environmental factors and ecosystem services is needed in order to understand environmental constraints when dealing with ecological problems.

Research for changes of soil water and salt is an important content of land sciences and agriculture sciences in arid and semi arid regions. In this paper, sampling in actual agricultural fields, laboratory analysis of soil samples and statistical analysis methods are used to quantitatively analyze soil salinity changes under different irrigation methods throughout the cotton growing season in Shihezi reclamation area. The results show that irrigation methods play an important role in soil salt content in the surface soil (0–20 cm) and sub-deep soil (40–60 cm), followed by deep soil layer (60–100 cm) and root soil layer (20–40 cm). Furrow irrigation yields the maximum soil salt content in deep layer (60–100 cm) or sub-deep layer (40–60 cm) and the maximum salinity occurs in the first half of the cotton growing season (June or earlier). In contrast, drip irrigation yields the maximum soil salinity in the root layer (20–40 cm) or sub-deep (40–60 cm), and this usually appears in the second half growing season (July or after). The ratio of chloride ion to sulfate ion (Cl^-/) and its change in the soil are on the rise under furrow irrigation, while the value first increased and then decreased with a peak point in June under drip irrigation. This suggests that furrow irrigation may shift the type of soil salinization to chloride ion type moreso than drip irrigation. Potassium and sodium ion contents of the soil show that soil sodium+potassium content will drop after the first rise under furrow irrigation and the value is manifested by fluctuations under drip irrigation. Potassium+sodium content change is relatively more stable in the whole cotton growth period under irrigation methods. The maximum of sodium and potassium content of the soil usually occur in deep soil layer (60–100 cm) or sub-deep soil layer (40–60 cm) in most sample points under furrow irrigation while it is inconsistent in different sample points under drip irrigation. A nonparametric test for paired samples is used to analyze differences of soil salt content under different irrigation methods. This analysis shows that the impact of irrigation on soil salinity is most significant in July, followed by August, June, May, and April in most sample points. The most significant impact of irrigation methods occurs in the surface soil layer (0–20 cm), followed by deep layer (60–100 cm), root layer (20–40 cm) and sub-deep (40–60 cm). These conclusions will be benefitial for mitigation of soil salinization, irrigation and fertilization and sustainable land use.

Tourism has emerged as a major driving force in the growth and expansion of rural settlements. After several studies revealed spatial differentiation of touristization among rural settlements, studies were conducted to explain this phenomenon. However, most of these studies explained spatial differentiation of rural touristization in a qualitative way. More robust and detailed quantitative results are needed to evaluate the relative roles of different factors. In this study, which takes Yesanpo tourism as a case study, the Geo-detector method was introduced to evaluate determining factors of rural touristization. Results show that “distance to core entry”, “tourist number and sojourn time”, and “distance to the nearest scenic area” have had a strong effect on the rural touristization in Yesanpo, whereas “distance to river”, “elevation”, “distance to main road”, and “slope” have had a weak influence. The latter did, however, contribute a lot to touristization when interacting with “distance to core entry”, “tourist number and sojourn time”, and “distance to the nearest scenic”, indicating the importance of these four factors. Higher rural touristization occurred in the zone near the core entry, with many tourists, long sojourn times, and proximity to the scenic area.

In the tourism industry, transportation is the greatest consumer of energy and contributes the largest amount of CO₂ emissions (ECCE). Airplane flights make up between 60% and 70% of all forms of tourism transport. Since airplane travel is the main way for tourists to access islands, airplane travel receives considerable attention in the study of the relationship between island tourism transportation, environment and economy. However, the parameters adopted to estimate ECCE in the literature are usually either out-of-date or taken from papers not written in China. To improve the accuracy of estimates, all the parameters used in this paper are current and were obtained locally. Based on these parameters and a bottom-up approach, a more accurate estimation of ECCE for the off-shore island city of Haikou was obtained in 2012. The results indicate that 24.30% of the city's energy consumption, 33.89 PJ, was due to tourism transportation, while CO₂ emissions were 2.54 Mt. It is incorrect to assume that tourism is “an industry with no pollution”. In Haikou, for example, tourism turns out to be the major form of energy consumption in the city. This paper makes several suggestions intended to minimize the negative environmental impact from tourism transportation. These include recommending longer stays, a decrease in the number of flights, taxation of airplane emissions, and the setting up an environmental recovery fund.

As a mega-city constrained by resources and the environment, Beijing has developed a leading service sector, and it is necessary to evaluate the service sector circular economy in this major global city. Here, we establish an indicator system including internal subsystem (economic production, resources consumption, waste emissions, and waste recycling), external subsystem (industry correlation) and mutualistic subsystem (society development), and use AHP modeling to evaluate the period from 2000 to 2013. We found that the development of the service sector circular economy in Beijing experienced an increase from 2000 to 2008, then a decrease from 2009 to 2013. This change mainly resulted from the decrease in Beijing's GDP following the international financial crisis in 2008. The internal subsystem greatly influences the service sector circular economy:synthetic weight of economic production, resource consumption, waste emissions and waste recycling was 0.367,0.136,0.136 and 0.075, respectively. Within the external subsystem, industrial correlation has a weak connection with Beijing's service sector circular economy with asynthetic weight of 0.143, this result illustrates that the development of the service sector circular economy has an intimate relationship with other cities or provinces around Beijing, such as Tianjin and Hebei. As are presentative of the mutualistic subsystem, society development has a positive nexus with the service sector circular economy with asynthetic weight of 0.143, proving that the development of the service sector circular economy can improve the service sector employment ratio in Beijing. We conclude with some suggestions on how to develop the service sector circular economy in Beijing.

Using the combined approach of questionnaire and semi-structured interview, this study aims to examine the characteristics of a small agricultural business, and benefits perceived by the participants, and challenges. The “multi-industrial system” regional initiative for creating new high-value-added businesses project encourages rural residents to commercialize their surplus agricultural and forestry products, such as pickled or dried wild and cultivated plants. Knowledgeable older people, women farmers in particular, are motivated to market their vegetables directly to the urban market, and their home-processed wild plants to local restaurants and hotels. It found that the older people involved in the business considered that their health and economic situation had been improved through participating in vegetable cultivation and sales. Some lessons from this case study can be identified: the empowerment of older people and women farmers, through active interaction with the market and learning new technologies, including internet-based information search strategies.