Boundary delineation and grading functional zoning of Sanjiangyuan National Park based on biodiversity importance evaluations.

Recently, China advanced a policy of establishing a protected area system with national parks as the main body, and so the development of protected areas has entered a transitional period. However, to promote the coordinated development of economic construction and ecological protection of protected areas, their management needs to be more comprehensive and refined. Therefore, a more quantitative and refined spatial planning and management method for protected areas is urgently needed. This study took Sanjiangyuan National Park as the research object and considered the three biodiversity elements of species, ecosystems and landscape. The maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model, and Fragstats software were used to determine the areas with highly suitable species habitat, areas of high ecosystem service value and areas of high landscape diversity. Based on these areas, Marxan software was used to calculate the irreplaceability value, identify the boundary of Sanjiangyuan National Park and clarify the gaps of the existing Sanjiangyuan National Park in the space. We suggest that at least 18,569 km2 of the eastern part of the Sanjiangyuan Region with a high irreplaceability value should be included in the existing Sanjiangyuan National Park. Moreover, the first-level zones were also classified based on irreplaceability, and the second-level functional zones were classified by K-means clustering based on the evaluation of ecological vulnerability and economic construction suitability. The first-level zones include "core conservation zones" and "general control zones", which had areas of 71,758.20 km2 (57.99%) and 51,980.13 km2 (42.01%), respectively. The core conservation zones were further zoned into primary vulnerable zones and secondary vulnerable zones. The subzones of the general control zones are multifunctional and they are tourism-grazing-living zones, grazing-living zones, tourism-living zones, tourism zones and other areas.

Spatial-temporal variation, sources and driving factors of organic carbon burial in rift lakes on Yunnan-Guizhou plateau since 1850.

Burial of organic carbon (OC) in rift lakes on plateau is an important part of the global cycle. It is affected by natural and anthropogenic factors. In this study, we selected the sediment records of 7 rift lakes on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau to study spatial-temporal variation, sources and driving factors of organic carbon burial since 1850. The analysis of the temporal and spatial trend of carbon burial shows that the TOC concentration, TOC flux, C: N and mass accumulate rate have increased significantly since 1850. Co-occurrence network analysis indicated that a strong correlation between the TOC concentration and silty. TOC concentration were identified as core genera due to their high concentration. Carbon isotope tracing results show that before 1950, endogenous OC input played a dominant role, and after 1950, the proportion of exogenous OC increased. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that after 1950, agriculture intensification and population increase become one of the factors affecting the carbon burial of lakes in this area. The result of this study indicate that anthropogenic factors have become the main factors promoting carbon burial in rift lakes on the plateau.

Ecological network analysis of an urban water metabolic system: Integrated metabolic processes of physical and virtual water.

The contradiction between social economy and water environment has become increasingly prominent, and the analysis of urban water metabolism system (UWMS) represents a problem-solving approach from the perspective of the entire flow process. However, a comprehensive UWMS model that considers both physical and virtual water flows is currently lacking. This paper presents an innovative application of an ecological network model of the UWMS-integrated metabolic process of physical and virtual water in Xining during the 2002-2018 period. By analysing and screening the metabolic characteristics, metabolic structure and metabolic relationships, the sustainability of the UWMS is evaluated in depth, and the main causes and critical compartments of the unhealthy metabolic process are identified. The findings show that the UWMS in Xining maintains a moderate level of robustness (the average R = 0.48) with limited metabolic efficiency. Since 2012, the water management policies in Xining have been significantly strengthened, contributing to a slight increase in robustness by improving the water use efficiency and metabolic structure. The integrated metabolic process is unhealthy because the metabolic structure is not reasonable, and the systematic metabolic relationship tends to be antagonistic due to the network mutualism index dropping to 1.0 during 2016-2018. We conclude that efficient irrigation management, more infrastructure projects for the sewer network, wastewater treatment and recycling could provide effective support to enhance the coordinate development of the social economy and water environment in Xining.

Exploring the influencing paths of natives' conservation behavior and policy incentives in protected areas: Evidence from China.

To enhance ecosystem conservation in protected areas, natives' behavior, mainly the use of natural resources or direct human disturbance to ecosystems, must be well intervened and regulated. To explore the determinants and incentives of the conservation behavior of natives, this paper establishes a theoretical behavior model emphasizing livelihood assets and conservation policy impacts, and specifies it with structural equation modeling. The protected areas of Chishui county in southwest China and the Three-River-Source National Park in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were selected for empirical analyses based on household surveys. Results show that conservation intentions that shape the natives' conservation behavior are collectively decided by conservation attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Livelihood assets exert indirect positive effects on conservation behavior by influencing the aforementioned psychological variables. The impacts on conservation behavior of the governmental policy instruments, Grain to Green Program, Grassland Ecological Protection Subsidy and Incentive Policy, and Ecological Ranger Post Setting are evaluated. The command & control functions of the first two instruments are verified to be effective. The propaganda & education functions of all three policy instruments affect conservation intention and behavior by influencing conservation attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control of the natives. The ecological compensation functions of the policies prevent the loss of the natives' livelihood assets but fail to enhance it. The findings demonstrate that besides the direct impacts on conservation behavior of the protection policy instruments, the indirect policy impacts affecting the protection consciousness of natives should not be underestimated. In the long run, a suggestion is to strengthen eco-compensation to improve livelihood assets, to better promote the protection behavior of the local residents and obtain sustainable ecosystem conservation in the protected areas. This research demonstrates applicability and feasibility of the behavioral theory and causal model method in natural conservation study and shows strong policy implication.

Identification of conflict between wildlife living spaces and human activity spaces and adjustments in/around protected areas under climate change：A case study in the Three-River Source Region.

Overlap between wildlife living spaces and human activity spaces represents one of the main causes of human-wildlife conflict. It is therefore necessary to identify and adjust the spatial distribution of conflicts because climate change will modify the ranges and locations of species. The MaxEnt model was used to simulate the distribution of wildlife living spaces under current and future climatic conditions (RCP4.5 scenario) based on species distribution data and environmental data from the Three-River Source Region. Furthermore, the logistic-cellular automata model was used to simulate the changes in human activity spaces (construction land and arable land) by 2050. Areas of overlap between wildlife living spaces and human activity spaces were determined by overlay analysis. Then, the areas of construction and arable land that would conflict with wildlife were redistributed outside highly suitable wildlife living spaces. In addition, ecological corridors connecting current and future living spaces were planned for the migration of certain species in response to climate change based on the minimum cumulative resistance model. The results showed that the areas of highly suitable wildlife living spaces will decrease under the influence of climate change if global warming occurs. In the future, the area of overlap between highly suitable wildlife living spaces and construction land will be 125 km2, and that between highly suitable wildlife living spaces and arable land will be 340 km2. The redistribution of these areas will cause human activity spaces to become more concentrated. Moreover, 110 ecological corridors should be constructed across roads in the Three-River Source Region.

Spatial-temporal characteristics of China's industrial wastewater discharge at different scales.

Industrial wastewater is one of the three industrial wastes. If substandard industrial wastewater is discharged into the environment, there will be a serious impact on the environmental quality. Excessive emissions also indicate that water resources utilization is unreasonable. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the changing trends and influencing factors of industrial wastewater discharge in order to effectively conserve resources and improve the environmental quality. In this study, the spatial autocorrelation and the environmental Kuznets curve were used to study the spatial-temporal changes and characteristics of industrial wastewater discharge at the provincial scale and prefectural scale in China in 2004-2015. Then, the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index was used to analyze the influencing factors of wastewater discharge in this period. China's total industrial wastewater discharge showed a trend of increasing at the beginning and then decreasing, and more than half provinces or cities show this trend of decoupling from economic development. Moreover, wastewater discharge was higher in the east region and lower in the west region at both the provincial scale and prefectural scale, but the aggregation degree on the prefectural scale is more obvious than that on the provincial scale. The technical effect has a general inhibitory effect on industrial wastewater discharge, but it also promoted the discharge in a few cities; the structure effect on industrial wastewater discharge has generally changed from promotion to inhibition during the study period; and economic effect and population effect were mainly to promote industrial wastewater discharge. Therefore, a few cities should accelerate technology upgrading and industrial restructuring in recent years in order to change the promoting effect, and most cities need to strengthen the implementation of economic measures and improve the residents' environmental awareness.