Suchergebnisse

This study measured the spatio-temporal change of the Arable Land Allocation Intensity (ALAI), and established a toughness index to evaluate the responses of grain productivities to the ALAIs in 31 provinces. The results show that the ALAI decreased in 31 provinces during 2005–2020, whereas the grain productivity responses differed. Though China's Major Grain producing areas (CMGPA) experienced decreasing arable land allocation intensities compared with the non-CMGPAs, they still showed a robust toughness of grain productivity. The spatial barycenter of grain productivity moved towards Northeast China, which was much faster and further than the northwest movement of the ALAI, indicating a dislocated motion of grain production and ALAI. In all, both the toughness of grain productivity and the tightening arable land allocation intensities were apparent in the CMGPAs, especially in the northeastern CMGPAs in China. In order to improve the grain productivity on shrinking arable land resources, this study suggests that we tighten the quota of arable land transformed into construction land, improve the per-unit grain yield, and enhance the remote sensing technology and field surveys to better monitor the local governments' performance in arable land management.

Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), substantive progress has been achieved through the joint efforts made between China and the collaborative parties, attracting great attention from the international community. However, regarding the relationship between BRI and "a community with a shared future for mankind", a concept proposed by President Xi Jinping later, the explanations are diversified in the academia. The diversity indicates that a common understanding of this relationship is yet to be reached, calling for a further discussion. This paper argues that "a community with a shared future for mankind" is China's outlook for the future world facing a period of major change never seen in a century. It is China's vision of international society but transcends the narrative of international society in the international politics studies, because in the former, each party recognizes the deep interdependence relationships (or a form of shared future) among them and between human and nature, thereby willing to negotiate and cooperate to advance the world's economic development, deal with conflict of interests and contradictions among states/civilizations, and resolve the dissonance between human and nature. Thus, a peaceful, stable, prosperous, and sustainable world can be created and preserved. In regard to BRI, it is the platform where China constructs a community with a shared future for mankind through incentive mechanisms and applies its vision of international society.

Live woody vegetation is the largest reservoir of biomass carbon, with its restoration considered one of the most effective natural climate solutions. However, terrestrial carbon fluxes remain the largest uncertainty in the global carbon cycle. Here, we develop spatially explicit estimates of carbon stock changes of live woody biomass from 2000 to 2019 using measurements from ground, air, and space. We show that live biomass has removed 4.9 to 5.5 PgC year −1 from the atmosphere, offsetting 4.6 ± 0.1 PgC year −1 of gross emissions from disturbances and adding substantially (0.23 to 0.88 PgC year −1 ) to the global carbon stocks. Gross emissions and removals in the tropics were four times larger than temperate and boreal ecosystems combined. Although live biomass is responsible for more than 80% of gross terrestrial fluxes, soil, dead organic matter, and lateral transport may play important roles in terrestrial carbon sink ; This study was funded by NASA Interdisciplinary Science Program (NNH16ZDA001N-IDS). M.L. and Y. Yang have been supported by the NASA Postdoctoral Program, administered by Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA.G.-J.N. was supported by the European Union H2020-VERIFY project (776810).