Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Part 4: S&T and Society—Ecology and Environment,Vol 35,No. 01
Desertification, since initial recognition in 1927 and common definition in 1992, through its vicissitudes, is still one of the serious global environmental issues facing the world and exists as the bottleneck of development. Desertification threatens terrestrial ecological security and limits the sustainability of socio-economic development. In consideration of the impacts of desertification, an “Earth Cancer” and a persistent disease, the authors contribute four prescriptions of “good medicines” for the global initiatives to combat desertification, on the basic framework of Chinese strategies and experiences of “four horizontal beams and eight pillars,” in line with the 15.3 goal of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); namely, development of Protocol of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and unification of Weights and Measures (benchmarks and indicators) of the implementation and compliance of the UNCCD; setting up of global observation network to monitor the area change of dryland change; compilation of global natural desert (heritage) directory to leave behind landscape of aboriginal sand sea for future generations; initiation of “global governance action to combat desertification” to strive for achieving the target of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) at 2030.
Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Part 4: S&T and Society—Ecology and Environment,Vol 35,No. 02
This paper summarizes the characteristics of natural ecological conditions, the current situation of economic and social development, and existing problems and development opportunities of the Yellow River Basin. The overall framework of the national strategy for ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin has been set up according to the three logical progressive links of basement-ecological priority, carrying capacity-development constraint, and driving force-internal and external relevancy. It has formed the academic thinking of delimiting ecological, agricultural, and urban functional areas through the evaluation of the suitability of human activities for land and space development, evaluating and calculating the resource and environment carrying capacity of the three functional areas, and then formulating high-quality development strategies for different functional areas according to the carrying capacity. The ecological restoration and protection strategies such as ecology-migration-urbanization construction project, agricultural planting structure adjustment, dry farming basic farmland construction, and classification and batch solution to the historical problems of mined out areas of energy and mineral resources are put forward. The proposed high-quality development measures mainly include expanding the development scale of renewable energy such as solar energy, wind energy, and hydropower, developing characteristic bio-medicine and healthy food industries, developing new strategic industries such as electromechanical device, electronic information, and artificial intelligence with the help of state-owned enterprises’ innovation potential, innovating the mechanism of industrialization transformation of scientific and technological achievements and the system of value distribution of resource advantages, improving the modern management system of spatial fine governance, regional differential development, and opening up.
Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Part 4: S&T and Society—Ecology and Environment,Vol 35,No. 03
The Yangtze River Economic Belt is a major regional development strategy of China to form the backbone axis of the national “one body and two wings” development and opening-up pattern. This paper systematically analyzed ecological status and status of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, such as ecosystem service value, ecological location, ecological types, ecological geographic pattern, natural conditions and ecological disasters of the Yangtze River. Then the major ecological and environmental issues were summarized, including serious water and air pollution, dramatic degradation of main tributaries of the Yangtze River and lakes, the increasing cumulative impacts of major projects on ecology and environment, and the unharmonious relationship between rivers and lakes. Finally, four protection strategies were proposed to ensure the well-coordinated environmental conservation and avoid excessive development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, including implementing water quality goals management by stressing water eco-environmental protection with the top priority; forming a land and space development pattern dominated by intensive, concentrated spatial development and natural and open ecological space; continuing to implement the green ecological protection project of the Yangtze River Economic Belt; integrating departments and localities to realize comprehensive watershed management.
Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Part 4: S&T and Society—Ecology and Environment,Vol 35,No. 04
Grassland ecosystems of Northern China, the headwaters region and water resource conservation areas for the Yellow River, the Yangzi River, the Lancang River, and the Luanhe River, are important ecological security barriers in China. They play extremely important roles in maintaining multiple ecosystem functions and services and sustaining multinational cultural diversity. However, the grassland ecosystems of Northern China have experienced widespread deterioration in functions and services since the last several decades due to the overexploitation of production functions at the cost of their ecological functions. Therefore, assessment of ecosystem services and ecological regionalization of grasslands in Northern China are needed for optimizing their production functions and ecological functions, establishing ecological security barriers, and achieving ecological civilization. Based on the spatial patterns of key ecosystem services and environmental conditions, we propose seven ecoregions and twenty-five sub-ecoregions across grassland ecosystems in Northern China. The ecological regionalization of grasslands can be used to guide sustainable grassland management, restoration of degraded grasslands, and biodiversity conservation in Northern China.
Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Part 4: S&T and Society—Ecology and Environment,Vol 35,No. 05
One of the most pervasive challenges affecting human and planetary well-being is inadequate access to clean water and sanitation. Problems with water are expected to become worse in the coming decades, with water scarcity occurring globally, in the face of ever-growing populations, intensive human activities, and climatic variation. Addressing the aforementioned water security has been achieved consensus and included into the sustainable development goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. Despite these ample opportunities, it remains challenging to create reliable, sustainable, and affordable solutions to provide universal access to clean water and sanitation. In this context, the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be an attractive solution to help with this challenge. We summarized the core of the SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and the problems encountered during the progress to date. Building upon this, we conducted a literature review and provided a state-of-the-art analysis of leveraging AI to help achieve SDG 6 alongside the resultant impacts. Afterwards, we highlighted the key issues necessary to be tackled in the coming years if AI is expected to be well applied with its maximum benefits. Plus, we put forward the prospects of future efforts on this revolution.
Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Part 4: S&T and Society—Ecology and Environment,Vol 35,No. 06
Since the 20th century, the health hazards caused by chemical pollutants have become increasingly prominent. Tens of thousands of high-throughput chemicals have entered the environment along with the massive production and use, raising emerging scientific issues in environmental science-related fields. In this article, background and scientific significance of establishing the research direction on identification of novel organic pollutants are introduced. Basic principles of discriminating molecular structures and environmental behaviors of pollutant candidates with regard to the characteristics of persistent organic pollutants are discussed. Technical strategy and advantages of the established analytical frameworks, including quantitative structure–property relationship model prediction, suspect/non-targeted analysis, and effect-directed analysis, are further described. In-depth exploration on occurrence, behaviors, and effects of novel organic pollutants will play a crucial supportive role in leading the direction of discipline development, improving chemical risk assessment criteria, and revealing the toxicity and hazard mechanisms of environmental pollutants.
