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Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework proposes to protect 30% and restore 30% of the land with high quality and maximize the goal of conserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. Succession theory and vegetation restoration can serve the targets of 30% protection and restoration. Succession theory is the core theory in vegetation ecology. Succession refers to the process that the structure or composition of a group of different species in a site change with time. Vegetation restoration is the process of restoring or recovering or naturally renewing plant communities, mainly based on plant planting and configuration. Vegetation restoration is the process of changing the structure and function of ecosystem from simple to complex, from low level to high level, and the ultimate goal is to establish healthy and stable plant communities. Succession is the foundation of vegetation restoration, and vegetation restoration can be seen as the manipulation of the succession process to achieve the goal of restoring damaged vegetation ecosystem. Succession theory can guide vegetation restoration. Vegetation restoration is also beneficial to the development of succession theory. Succession theory and vegetation restoration differ in scale, theme and paradigms. Succession often emphasizes disturbances related to nature, while vegetation restoration focuses on disturbances related to humans. The succession can be divided into primary succession and secondary succession according to the nature of bare land. The restoration process is suggested to be regarded as the tertiary succession, which will help to understand the management options for promoting the success of vegetation restoration through human intervention, especially by emphasizing the management options which may improve success, especially by addressing environmental and biological legacies. Artificial intervention based on succession theory can accelerate vegetation restoration, avoid early positive promotion of degraded vegetation ecosystems to pre-degraded levels in poor habitats, and also avoid resource waste caused by disordered competition and low efficiency among communities. This paper also puts forward the scientific and technical issues on the theories of vegetation restoration and succession in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Petrocodon Hance is one of the famous ornamental flowers, but most of them are assessed as extremely dangerous (CR), or at least above vulnerable (VU) due to climate turbulence and strong interference of human activities. To reconstruct the temporal and spatial changes of the potential suitable areas of Petrocodon since the last interglacial period, and explore the response of the suitable areas to environmental changes, which provided theoretical guidance for the origin of Petrocodon, the study of geographical differentiation, the conservation of unique germplasm resources in China, and the development and utilization of gardens. In this paper, combined with 120 distribution records and 17 environmental variables, the optimal MaxEnt model and geographic information technology (ArcGIS) were used to simulate the suitable areas and distribution pattern of Petrocodon in China and Indo-China Peninsula. Based on stepwise multiple linear regression analysis, redundancy analysis and Monte-Carlo test, the dominant variables affecting the current geographical distribution of Petrocodon were evaluated. The results were as follows: (1) The prediction accuracy of the optimized MaxEnt model was high, and the AUC value was greater than 0.96. The potential suitable areas of Petrocodon for the present distribution are continuous from Southwest China to North Vietnam, scattered in central and southern China and blocky in North Myanmar, of which the South Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in China was the most suitable. (2) The environmental variables which restrict the geographical distribution of Petrocodon included precipitation of the driest month (bio14), precipitation of the warmest quarter (bio18), precipitation of the wettest quarter (bio16), SD of the temperature seasonality (bio4), min temperature of the coldest month (bio6) and altitude (alt). (3) Under the climate change scenario, the expansion and contraction areas of the suitable habitat of Petrocodon were located in the north and northeast of the current potential distribution area, which were sensitive areas susceptible to climate change. During the last interglacial period, the suitable area of Petrocodon expanded on a large scale, but there was almost no suitable distribution area of Petrocodon in the dry and cold environment during the last glacial maximum. After that, with the aggravation of climate warming, the suitable habitats of Petrocodon increased rapidly to high latitudes, while the suitable habitat in low latitudes decreased. (4) The centroid position of the suitable area for Petrocodon migrated northwards from Yongfu County, Guangxi (110.10° E, 24.69° N) to Chengbu County, Hunan (110.29° E, 26.05° N). To sum up, global warming has a positive impact on the potential distribution area of Petrocodon, but extreme warming will cause the suitable habitat of Petrocodon to shrink, and the niche of Petrocodon will narrow. Southwest China to North Vietnam, which has the advantage of mature karst landform, may be its main refuge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the melting of Arctic Sea ice because of global warming creates new shipping routes and energy resources, the post-Cold War peace and stability of the Arctic has been shattered. It has once again become a strategic location for multinational rivalries, attracting widespread attention in international geopolitical circles. Compared to other regions of the world, studying the Arctic region from a Western geopolitical perspective is at the forefront of international research. Although China, as a near-Arctic country, has developed geopolitical research on the Arctic in response to its practical needs, domestic research in this field started late, with room for improvement in its breadth and depth. Therefore, 98 papers in the Web of Science core database that are highly relevant to Arctic geopolitics are selected as the object of the study. Through a literature review, we summarize the development of Arctic research from a Western geopolitical perspective, and the shift in perspective and hot topics; we adopt a forward-looking perspective of future research development trends to provide reference for innovative research in this field in China. The results reveal the following: (1) Research on the geopolitics of the Arctic has been conducted in a wide range of fields and topics in Western academia, with some correlation among the topics, although the links among the studies are not strong, and the research scale generally shows a fluctuating growth trend. (2) The research content, composed of six major fields (boundary and territorial politics, Arctic shipping routes, Arctic resource development, Arctic geo-strategy, Arctic security and governance, and indigenous population issues), focus on politics and economics but is lack of cultural research. (3) Under the influence of aesthetic humanism and the "cultural and institutional turn," the trend in the cross-fertilization of geopolitical, geo-economic, and geo-cultural perspectives has increasingly become more obvious. (4) Research on the Arctic from a geopolitical perspective has been relatively fruitful, although there remain shortcomings in the depth of theoretical research, breadth of research scale, diversity of research methods, and geo-economic and geo-cultural research paradigms, which require further development. Future research will generate new ideas and directions in immaterial areas such as theoretical framework studies, interdisciplinary studies, and emotional culture, and will focus more on the role of multiple actors, such as indigenous peoples and NGOs, in geopolitical knowledge production and power competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the maximum entropy model (Maxent) and geographic information system ( ArcGIS 10.3) softwares were used to predict the potential distribution areas of four Litsea species under the current and future climate conditions of China ( 2061 - 2080), and to analyze and classify their suitable habitats. The results were as follows: Litsea cubeba was widely distributed in the south to the Yangtze Hiver in China, and under the future climate with two ( HCP2.6, HCP8.5) carhon dioxide concentrations, during 2061-2080 the suitable anca for its distribution was reduced by 4.9%and 0.5%, respectively; L. coreana was mainly distributed in central and northern subtropical regions of China, and under the climate scenarios with two carbon dioxide concentrations, in 2061-2080 the total suitable area would be increased by 5.6% and 4.5%, respectively; L. greennumiana was mainly distributed in the south subtropical regions of China; L. mollis was widely distributed in the subtropical region. Under the future climate HCP2. 6 scenarios, the suitable area of the two species would be shrinked by 1.0% and 3.3%, respectively, and under the climale HCP8.5, the suitable area of the two species would be shrinked by 5.6% and 8.3%, respectively. These results reveal that due lo different ecological requirements, Litsea species will have different distributional responses to the future climate. the introduction and cultivation of Litsea species should consider the influences of climale change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biological invasions seriously threat the global biodiversity and ecosystem health, causing great losses to global environment and economy. However, rapid climate change could significantly affect the diffusion and invasion of alien species. To explore the development situation of biological invasions under climate change could be helpful for better understanding the status and hot spots in this field, and also the benefitial for understanding the invasion mechanism and making effective management measures. In our study, we studied the Web of Science(WOS)database for publications pertaining to the biological invasions under climate change between the years 1990-2016, we then used the Thomson Data Analyzer(TDA)to operate the systematic analysis. We found that there were total 1 736 published papers in recent 27 years. The number of publications increased annually, while it rapidly increased since 2009. This research area related to several subjects such as environmental science and ecology, biodiversity protection, botany, etc. Prof. Chown SL form Monash University had the largest amounts of publications. USA had the maximum total papers, highly cited and high impact factor papers. California University published the most papers among international research institutes, while the Chinese Academy of Science(CAS)ranked the 10th. Biological Invasions was the academic journal which had the largest publications. Recent studies focused primarily on topics related to species distribution models, biodiversity, global warming and risk assessment. China totally published 52 articles, Chinese Academy of Science had the largest amounts of papers, while Institute of Zoology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Institute of Botany ranking Top 3 among the branch organizations of CAS. In the future, China should give more attentions on the high level research papers and international cooperation of biological invasions under climate change. In addition, we need to focus on prediction and risk assessment of alien species, relationships between biological invasions and biodiversity, system evolution of invaders, relationships among multiple trophic levels of invaded ecosystem, marine biological invasion, influence of invasion on human health, etc under a rapid global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]