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The spatiotemporal dynamic patterns of vegetation in mining area are still unclear. This study utilized time series trajectory segmentation algorithm to fit Landsat NDVI time series which generated from fusion images at the most prosperous period of growth based on ESTARFM algorithm. Combining with the shape features of the fitted trajectory, this paper extracted five vegetation dynamic patterns including pre-disturbance type, continuous disturbance type, stabilization after disturbance type, stabilization between disturbance and recovery type, and recovery after disturbance type. The result indicated that recovery after disturbance type was the dominant vegetation change pattern among the five types of vegetation dynamic pattern, which accounted for 55.2% of the total number of pixels. The follows were stabilization after disturbance type and continuous disturbance type, accounting for 25.6% and 11.0%, respectively. The pre-disturbance type and stabilization between disturbance and recovery type accounted for 3.5% and 4.7%, respectively. Vegetation disturbance mainly occurred from 2004 to 2009 in Shengli mining area. The onset time of stable state was 2008 and the spatial locations mainlydistributed in open-pit stope and waste dump. The reco-very state mainly started since the year of 2008 and 2010, while the areas were small and mainly distributed at the periphery of open-pit stope and waste dump. Duration of disturbance was mainly 1 year. The duration of stable period usually sustained 7 years. The duration of recovery state of the type of stabilization between disturbances continued 2 to 5 years, while the type of recovery after disturbance often sustained 8 years.

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) as one of the most widely used metal nanomaterials can enter soil and water environment via various pathways, exert toxicity on water-borne organisms and deteriorate the aquatic eco-environment. With complex composition of natural water, the physicochemical property of AgNPs as nano materials makes their transformation process more complicated in water system. Therefore, understanding of the fate and transport of AgNPs in aqueous environment is extremely important for water quality management and protection of the eco-environment. Deve-lopment of modern science and technology has made it possible to study the process of the dissolution of AgNPs in environment. This paper summarized the source and risk of AgNPs in environment, analyzed impacts of environmental factors such as pH, dissolved oxygen, ionic strength and intrinsic factors of AgNPs such as particle size and coating on the AgNPs transformation in water environment, and summarized the main analytical techniques for the AgNPs size, potential and morphology. Finally, this paper pointed out the major research gaps in the current research and provided prospective for the future research.

The relationship between the distribution of halobios and environmental variables has been a focus of present research in marine ecology. Species distribution models (SDMs) have been widely employed to predict the distribution patterns and potential habitat suitability assessments of marine species and provide an efficient approach for marine biodiversity conservation, invasive species prevention, and fishery management. SDMs mainly include habitat suitability index models, mechanism models, and statistical models. In this paper, the theoretical basis of SDMs was firstly concluded and summarized. Next, the exploitation and case-studies of SDMs, especially the statistical models, for predicting potential distribution of marine species were reviewed. Then, comparisons of various methods for variable selection and model validation were made. Conclusions could be drawn that Akaike information criterion showed excellent performance when it came to variable selection, while Kappa coefficient and Area Under receiver operating character Curve (AUC) were widely used in relation to model validation. Finally, problems and prospects of SDMs were discussed. With the development of research on physiological characteristics, using mechanism models to predict potential habitats of halobios would become a trend.

The secondary Picea forest is one of the dominant vegetation types in Guandi Mountain. It's also the representative type of evergreen cold-temperate coniferous forests in subalpine region of north China. A 4 hm 2 fixed monitoring Picea forest plot was established in Pangquangou Nature Reserve, Guandi Mountain (GDS plot) to better understand the basic characteristics such as species composition, community structure and its potential ecological process and mechanisms. We analyzed species composition, structure and spatial distribution of sample forest based on the first background survey data in this paper. The results showed that a total of 30 woody plant species existed in the sample area, which belonged to 11 families, 22 genera. The total individual number (including branches) was 26218 (independent individual number was 10266). Floristic composition in the region was defined as north temperate elements. Big differences of individual number, average diameter at breast height (DBH) and basal area among different species caused significant community layering effect, and the dominant species in each layer was obvious. Size-class structure of species showed bimodal skewed normal distribution at the canopy layer, approximate normal distribution at the subtree layer, and 'L' type distribution at the shrub layer. Spatial distribution of the dominant tree species such as Picea wilsonii and Larix principis-rupprechtii showed different pattern features with the changing size class, whether in individual number or in aggregation degree. Compared with the above two species with the same size class, a large number of L. principis-rupprechtii with DBH≥30 cm aggregated in the center of sample plot, but few P. wilsonii individuals with DBH≥30 cm occurred in the plot and had no clustering distribution. Only a few L. principis-rupprechtii with DBH≤10 cm occurred in the plot with a scattering distribution, and a large number of P. wilsonii with DBH≤10 cm aggregated in the center of the plot. There were also many P. wilsonii individuals with DBH≤10 cm distributed in the northwest area of the plot, but Betula albo-sinensis individuals with DBH≤10 cm mostly distributed in the southeast area of the plot. Shrub species such as Cotoneaster acutifolius, Spiraea pubescens and Lonicera szechuanica also showed heterogeneous spatial distribution. Species distribution pattern was affected by habitat conditions, and related to its own development, regeneration traits and ecological habits.

Quorum sensing (QS), a cell-to-cell communication, regulates a variety of social beha-viors, such as biofilm formation, public goods produce and gene horizontal transfer of bacteria. In the process of quorum sensing, public goods could be utilized by any members in the population, which was termed as cooperation. Notably, public goods also could be shared by the individuals who could not produce them, which was termed as cheating. Once cheaters come up, they possibly maintain equilibrium with cooperators, meanwhile they also possibly induce the collapse of population due to their rapid growth and shortage of public goods. Therefore, invasion of cheaters arouses wide attentions in medicine, agriculture, food science and so on regarded as a new strategy to control pathogens. In this study, based on the introduction about the theory of bacterial quorum sensing cooperation and cheating, we analyzed the factors influencing the formation and development of the relationship between cooperator and cheater. Moreover, we discussed the mechanism of stabilization in the relationship between cooperator and cheater, including kin selection, metabolic prudence, metabolic constraint (gene pleiotropy) and policing quorum sensing. Finally, some problems in current researches of quorum sensing cooperation and cheating were presented as well as the future research directions. We hoped this paper could deepen the understanding of bacterial quorum sen-sing and ecology of bacterial population.

With the development of urbanization, the effect of urban heat island has become increasingly evident. As an essential component of the urban natural landscapes, urban green space plays an important role in mitigating the effect of urban heat island. However, facing the rapid urbanization and changing environment, how to rationally plan and design the green space and realize its best cooling effect which can improve the urban environment and microclimate is still an urgent problem to be solved. So there is a strong need for mulitiscale researches on the cooling effect of urban green space. This paper systematically gave a review on the cooling effect of urban green space based on field measurement of air temperature, the main factors that influenced the cooling effect of green space were explored from three aspects including the area and shape characteristics of urban green space, the structure characteristics of vegetation and the external factors which affected the cooling effect, and the characteristics of the cooling effect of the green space were summarized from the aspect of time variation and distance decay. Then, the main problems and future research prospects of urban green space cooling effect were put forward.

Since China's reform and opening-up, the rapid growth of China's economy has greatly accelerated the expansion of built-up land, which has affected regional ecological environment to a great extent. Taking Jinjiang County of Fujian Province, one of the fastest economic-developing counties in the coastal areas of southeastern China, as a case study area, this paper focused on analyzing the rapid built-up land expansion process of the county and its impact on county's ecological quality using remote sensing techniques. Based on two Landsat images of 1996 and 2015 of Jinjiang, the built-up land of the county was extracted using the index-based built-up index (IBI) and its change was analyzed. In the meantime, the ecological status of Jinjiang was evaluated with a recently-proposed remote sensing based ecological index (RSEI) and the relationship between the built-up land dynamics and the ecological status changes of the county was quantitatively examined. The results showed that during the period from 1996 to 2015, the area of built-up land of Jinjiang had a net increase of 68.54 km 2 , a growth of 45%, and the expansion intensity was 0.55. The expansion of the built-up lands has caused overall degradation of the county's ecological quality. The mean value of RSEI of the county had declined from 0.532 in 1996 to 0.460 in 2015, a drop of13.5%. The area proportion of high ecological-quality grades also significantly fell from 39% in 1996 to 21% in 2015. The built-up land expansion intensity was negatively correlated with the ecological quality change.

The nature reserve is very important to biodiversity maintenance. However, due to the urbanization, the nature reserve has been fragmented with reduction in area, leading to the loss of species diversity. Establishing ecological network can effectively connect the fragmented habitats and plays an important role in species conversation. In this paper, based on deciding habitat patches and the landscape cost surface in ArcGIS, a minimum cumulative resistance model was used to simulate the potential ecological network of Fujian provincial nature reserves. The connectivity and importance of network were analyzed and evaluated based on comparison of connectivity indices (including the integral index of connectivity and probability of connectivity) and gravity model both before and after the potential ecological network construction. The optimum ecological network optimization measures were proposed. The result demonstrated that woodlands, grasslands and wetlands together made up the important part of the nature reserve ecological network. The habitats with large area had a higher degree of importance in the network. After constructing the network, the connectivity level was significantly improved. Although interaction strength between different patches va-ried greatly, the corridors between patches with large interaction were very important. The research could provide scientific reference and basis for nature protection and planning in Fujian Province.

Rice-fish is an important traditional farming system. In the rice-fish system, common carp (Cyprinus carpio) is the major species raised in paddy field where the environment is characterized by shadow water. Under a long-term of natural selection and artificial selection, the carp would adapt to the paddy field environment. We investigated two indigenous carps (C. carpio qingtianensis and C. carpio congjiangensis) that originated and evolved in the Globally Important Agriculture Heritage System (GIAHS) 'rice-fish system' in Qingtian, Zhejiang Province and 'rice-fish-duck system' in Congjiang, Guizhou Province. We measured the morphological traits of indigenous carps by collecting carp samples from 'rice-fish system' and 'rice-fish-duck system'. We used mitochondrial gene (D-loop) to build phylogenetic tree. We also collected data of morphological traits of other carp populations from documented databases and published papers. Both traditio-nal morphometric analysis and landmark based geometric morphometric analysis showed that Qingtian field carp and Congjiang field carp differed in body shape. Compared with Qingtian field carp, Cong-jiang field carp had a longer and more narrow tail, and lower ratio of tail length to body length. The analysis of phylogenetic tree suggested that Qingtian field carp and Congjiang field carp were genetically independent populations. However, principal component analysis basing on morphometric traits showed that the field carps (Qingtian field carp and Congjiang field carp) were morphometrically similar to each other and were both significantly different from other common carp populations, especially in the traits of caudal fin and dorsal fin. All these results suggested that carps living and evolving in paddy field environment were significantly different in genetics and morphology from the carp populations living in other water environment and that Qingtian field carp was morphologically different from Congjiang field carp.

Study of impacts of land uses on spatiotemporal dynamics of soil water content (SWC) is of great significance for understanding the performance characteristics of regional water cycling under changing environment. Based on long-term located field observations, this paper explored the temporal dynamics of soil water in 0-15 m soil profile under four land use types on the Loess Tableland from September 2012 to December 2015. Results showed that the annually averaged SWCs over the 0-15 m soil profile for alfalfa field, fallow field, fertilized cropland and unfertilized cropland were 15.1%, 22.0%, 19.6% and 21.1%, respectively. Soil water contents along the shallow soil profile exhibited seasonal and annual wetting and drying cycle from March to June and July to October, and the profile depths were 0-2, 0-4.6, 0-3 and 0-4.2 m, respectively. Soil water contents along the deep soil profiles had better temporal stability and were influenced by land-use types. Du-ring the observation years, the yield and water consumption in alfalfa field increased, which caused the increase of deep soil desiccation, the 2-10 m soil profile had become stable dry layer, blocking the way of precipitation recharge.As for the soil water balance in other three land use types, it was negative in cropland and fallow field during winter wheat growing season, however, during spring maize growing season, it was negative in fertilized cropland but positive in unfertilized cropland and fallow field. During the fallow period, it was positive in the three land use types. The crop water use efficiency in the fertilized cropland was increased by more than 3 times than the unfertilized cropland.

With increasing human disturbances (e.g., spatial fragmentation), drastic changes have taken place in spatial structure, which further affects the structure and function of ecosystem. The consequences of spatial changes on ecological processes are significantly associated with change in predator-prey interactions. Thus, exploring the relationships between spatial structure andpredator-prey interactions was of significance in understanding the underlying mechanisms of ecological changes in fragmented landscapes. This paper summarized current studies about the effects of typical spatial structures on predator-prey interactions, including the spatial size, spatial shape, spatial orientation, spatial distribution and spatial connectivity. Researches indicated that the stability and continuation of predator-prey system generally decreases with decreasing spatial size and connectivity, and excessive increase in the fragmentation of space, as well as changes in spatial shape and orientation which result in excessive increase in the grazing rate of predators. Effect of complicated spatial structure (coupled from above-mentioned structures) on predator-prey interactions, especially multispecies predator-prey interactions, should be focused on in the future.

In this paper, we took the leaves of shrubland plants in rocky desertification area in Southwestern Hunan as the research object to analyze the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) stoichiometry characteristics for different functional groups and different grades of rocky desertification, i.e., light rocky desertification (LRD), moderate rocky desertification (MRD) and intense rocky desertification (IRD). The results showed that the average contents of N and P were 12.89 and 1.19 g·kg -1 , respectively, and N/P was 11.24 in common shrubland plants in the study area, which indicated that the growth of most plants were mainly limited by N. The content of N was declined in order of deciduous shrubs > evergreen shrubs > annual herbs > perennial herbs. The content of P and N/P were higher in deciduous shrubs than in perennial herbs. Significant differences were found among the main families of plants in terms of the contents of N, P and N/P in the study sites. The plants of Gramineae had the lowest contents of N and P, andtheir growth was mostly restricted by N, while Leguminosae had the highest content of N and N/P, and their productivity was majorly controlled by P. The contents of N and P in the leaves were significantly higher in dicotyledon plants and C3 plants than in monocotyledon plants and C4 plants, but the N/P was not significantly diffe-rent between these two plant categories. The nitrogen-fixing plants had higher content of N and N/P than the non-nitrogen-fixing plants, but the P content was not significantly different between these two plant groups. There were significant correlations between contents of N and P, N/P and N in all study plots. No significant correlation was found between N/P and P content in the examined rocky desertification sites, except for that in MRD. There were no significant differences of the contents of N, P and N/P under different grades of rocky desertification.

As one of the key topics in the research of landscape ecology, regional ecological security patterns can effectively promote regional sustainable development and terrestrial ecological barriers construction. It is extremely important for middle Yunnan, with frequent disasters and fragile ecolo-gical environment, to construct ecological security patterns so as to effectively avoid the geological disasters, maintain ecosystem health, and promote the coordinated development of regional ecological system and social economic system. Taking Yuxi City as a case study area, this study firstly estimated the ecosystem services importance of water conservation, carbon fixation and oxygen release, soil conservation, and biodiversity according to the basal characteristics of regional ecological environment, and then identified ecological sources in consideration of the quality of integrated ecosystem services and single types. Secondly, the resistance surface based on land use types was modified by the sensitivity of regional geological disasters. Lastly, the ecological corridors were identified using minimum cumulative resistance model, and as a result, the ecological security pattern of Yuxi City was constructed. The results showed that there were 81 patches for ecological sources in Yuxi City, accounting for 38.4% of the total area, and overlaying 75.2% of nature protection areas. The ecological sources were mainly distributed in the western mountainous areas as well as eastern water areas of the city. The length of ecological corridors was 1642.04 km, presenting a spatial pattern of one vertical and three horizontals, and extending along river valleys and fault basins with high vegetation coverage. This paper constructed ecological security patterns in mountainous areas aiming at the characteristics of geological disasters, providing spatial guidance for development and conservation decision-making in mountain areas.

Stated preference method is usually used to evaluate the non-market value of environmental goods which includes contingent valuation method (CVM) and choice experiments (CE). In this paper, stated preference method was adopted to evaluate the non-market value of Sanjiang Plain wetland. A willingness to pay (WTP) evaluation model of stated preference method was constructed based on the random utility theory. The average WTP of CVM and CE was obtained, respectively. The average WTP elicited by CE was 379 yuan per year, and the marginal WTPs of different selection properties including water conservation, wetland area, natural landscape and biodiversity were114.00, 72.55, 59.55 and 37.09 yuan per year, respectively. Meanwhile, the average WTP elicited by CVM was 134 yuan per year. The influence of factors on WTP was analyzed and reasons for protest responses were discussed. Results showed that the respondents' WTP elicited by CE was signi-ficantly higher than that by CVM, and respondents' socio-economic attitudes such as level of education and personal annual income had a significant positive impact on respondents' WTP. There were no significant difference in the reasons of protest responses between CVM and CE. Besides, respondents' multiple attributes and multiple levels analysis could be carried out by CE and the WTP of wetland's selection attributes could be calculated. Therefore, CE had the better ability of revealing respondents' preference information than CVM and its assessment results were more close to the actual value.

This paper was mainly to explore the effects of two Streptomyces strains (S. roche D74 and S. pactum Act12) and their mixed actinomycetes agent on maize growth. Petri dish germination test, sand culture trial and plot trial were performed to determine the biological properties, leaf inducible enzyme activities, photosynthesis, ear characteristics, grain yield and quality of maize after seed soaking with acellular culture filtrate of D74 or Act 12 and seed coating with the mixed actinomycetes agent of two Streptomyces stains. The result showed that the seed soaking treatment significantly contributed to hypocotyls, radical and seedling growth, and increased the leaf inducible enzyme activities of maize seedlings. The 1000-fold dilution of D74 improved hypocotyl length, radicle length, and fibrous root number by 43.4%, 26.4%, and 100.7% (P<0.05), respectively, whereas the undiluted solution of D74 improved leaf polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity by 40.2% (P<0.05). The 1000-fold dilution of Act12 improved hypocotyl length, radicle length, and fibrous root number by 36.3%, 36.3%, and 117.5% (P<0.05), the total fresh mass and root fresh mass by 31.1% and 36.6%, respectively (P<0.05). The 10-fold and 1000-fold dilutions of Act12 improved leaf PPO activity by 38.1% and 39.5%, respectively (P<0.05). The seed coating treatment showed the following significant effects, compared with the control: 1) Improving the root development. 2) Enhancing the leaf photosynthesis. 3) Improving the ear characteristics and grain yield. 4) Promoteing the grain filling. 5) Improving the leaf inducible enzyme activities. The results indicated that seed coating with the mixed actinomycetes agent of two Streptomyces strains could significantly affect the biological characteristics, photosynthesis and biochemical metabolism of maize seedlings, stimulate root development, promote plant growth, and improve grain yield of maize.

The analysis of the characteristics and footprint climatology of farmland water and heat fluxes has great significance to strengthen regional climate resource management and improve the hydrothermal resource utilization in the region of red soil. Based on quality controlled data from large aperture scintillometer and automatic meteorological station in hilly region of red soil, this paper analyzed in detail the characteristics of farmland water and heat fluxes at different temporal scales and the corresponding source area distribution of flux measurement in the non-rainy season and crop growth period in hilly region of red soil. The results showed that the diurnal variation of water and heat fluxes showed a unimodal trend, but compared with the sunny day, the diurnal variation curves fluctuated more complicatedly on cloudy day. In the whole, either ten-day periods or month scale, the water and heat fluxes were greater in August than in September, while the net radiation flux was more distributed to latent heat exchange. The proportion of net radiation to latent heat flux decreased in September compared to August, but the sensible heat flux was vice versa. With combined effects of weather conditions (particularly wind), stability, and surface condition, the source areas of flux measurement at different temporal scales showed different distribution characteristics. Combined with the underlying surface crops, the source areas at different temporal scales also had different contribution sources.

A thermocline characteristics contour on a spatial overlay map was plotted using data collected on a monthly basis from Argo buoys and data of monthly CPUE (catch per unit effort) bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) long-lines fishery from the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) to evaluate the relationship between fishing grounds temporal-spatial distribution of bigeye tuna and thermocline characteristics in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO). In addition, Numerical methods were used to calculate the optimum ranges of thermocline characteristics of the central fishing grounds. The results showed that the central fishing grounds were mainly distributed between 10° N and 10° S. Seasonal fishing grounds in the south of equator were related to the seasonal variations in the upper boundary temperature, depth and thickness of thermocline. The fishing grounds were observed in areas where the upper boundary depth of thermocline was deep (70-100 m) and the thermocline thickness was more than 60 m. The CPUE tended to be low in area where the thermocline thickness was less than 40 m. The optimum upper boundary temperature range for distribution was 26-29 ℃, and the CPUE was mostly lower than the threshold value (Q3) of central fishing grounds when the temperature was higher than 29 ℃ or lower than 26 ℃. The temporal and spatial distribution of the fishing grounds was influenced by the seasonal variations in upper boundary depth and thermocline thickness. The central fishing grounds in the south of equator disappeared when the upper boundary depth of thermocline decreased and thermocline thickness became thinner. The lower boundary temperature and depth of thermocline and thermocline strength has little variation, but were strongly linked to the location of fishing grounds. The fishing grounds were mainly located between the two high-value zones of the lower boundary depth of thermocline, where the temperature was lower than 13 ℃ and the strength was high. When the depth was more than 300 m or less than 150 m, the lower boundary temperature was more than 17 ℃, or the strength was low, the CPUE tended to be low. The optimum range of thermocline characteristics was calculated using frequency analysis and empirical cumulative distribution function. The results showed that the optimum ranges for upper boundary thermocline temperature and depth were 26-29 ℃ and 70-110 m, the optimum lower boundary thermocline temperature and depth ranges were 11-13 ℃ and 200-280 m, the optimum ranges for thermocline thickness and thermocline strength were 50-90 m and 0.1-0.16 ℃·m -1 , respectively. The paper documented the distribution interval of thermocline characteristics for central fishing ground of the bigeye tuna in WCPO. The results provided a reference for improving the efficiency of pelagic bigeye tuna fishing operation and tuna resource management in WCPO.

To analyze social-economic causes of the regional ecological degradation, and avoid such problems as the complex circulation network and difficulty to identify laws caused by extended exergy analysis (EEA) previously applied at the national scale, this paper reduced spatial scale to the county scale and took Pengyang County in Ningxia as an example. Eco-economic system in Peng-yang County was divided into seven interrelated sectors. The exergy value of circulations in the eco-economic system including materials, labor and capital were calculated respectively to analyze the extended exergy characteristics of the driving sectors, factors and paths and evaluate their ecological efficiency. The results showed that agriculture and households were the main driving sectors of the eco-economic system in Pengyang County. The average exergy value of 31 flow paths among the sectors was 0.80 PJ. There were only 8 flow paths whose exergy values were higher than the average value. Eco-economic system in Pengyang County development was driven by two continuous flow paths, labor output of the households sector and demands of the households sector supported by other sectors. The mineral resources were massively exploited, and then directly exported to the outside, which could not promote the local development from the inside, but, on the contrary, increase the ecological environment pressure because of the over-exploitation. The eco-efficiency of Pengyang County in 2014 was 68.1%, almost equivalent to the by-level of the national scale at home and abroad ten years ago, mainly because of the lower eco-efficiencies of the service sector and households sector. EEA had the advantage of networking and structuring, could specify the sectors, factors and driven paths, and break through the bottleneck of driving mechanism research of the eco-economic system. EEA had certain adaptability to explore the operational principle and optimal pattern of the regional eco-economic system. Compared with the national scale, EEA at the regional scale could more easily identify the driving mechanism of eco-economic system, and could clearly guide the regional administrative department to reduce the ecological environment pressure.

This paper put forward an evaluation index system which included 5 aspects such as ecological location and representation, biodiversity, species rarity, naturality, scale and partition suitability as well as 15 indicators to assess the protection values of 60 national wetland parks in Hunan Province, China. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy method were used in this evaluation index system. There were 37 national wetland parks (accounting for 61.7%) keeping high protection values with scores of greater than or equal to 67.64 points, and 12 national wetland parks (accounting for 20.0%) keeping very high protection values with scores of greater than or equal to 77.72 points. Although there was a discrete and rare regularity of the inter-annual variation, these values still showed a decreasing trend in general. From the space point of view, 70 points isogram divided the national wetland parks of Hunan Province into two high score areas and three high score points in the west and east area, and one low score area and four low score points in the middle. Ecological location, resource endowment and scale were the decisive factors for the conservation va-lues of national wetland parks in Hunan Province.

PM 2.5 and PM 10 have become the primary pollutants of most cities in China. Atmospheric PM 2.5 and PM 10 mass concentrations, meteorological factors, traffic flow from 2013 to 2015 in Nanchang were analyzed. Spatiotemporal dynamic pattern of atmospheric particulate matter pollution and the effect of weather and traffic on particle concentration change were discussed in this paper. The results showed that PM 2.5 (70.92 μg·m -3 in 2013 > 53.70 μg·m -3 in 2014 ＞ 43.65 μg·m -3 in 2015) and PM 10 (119.72 μg·m -3 in 2013 ＞ 86.11 μg·m -3 in 2014 ＞ 73.32 μg·m -3 in 2015) concentrations decreased gradually from 2013 to 2015. In addition, low concentrations of PM 2.5 and PM 10 in summer (average PM 2.5 concentration 36.74 μg·m -3 , average PM 10 concentration 69.20 μg·m -3 ) but high concentrations in winter (average PM 2.5 concentration 74.29 μg·m -3 , average PM 10 concentration 111.64 μg·m -3 ) were observed. Moreover, PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations changed with the urban-rural gradient, decreasing from the city center to suburb. The ratio of PM 2.5 /PM 10 (0.595 ＞ 0.584 ＞ 0.557) decreased year by year from 2013 to 2015 and was higher in the city center area than in the edge of city. PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations were affected by various meteorological factors and significantly related to air pressure, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, precipitation and sunshine time. The influence of meteorological factors differed on PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations. Traffic flow significantly increased the surrounding PM 2.5 concentration, but not PM 10 concentration.

This paper proposed a vegetation health index (VHI) to rapidly monitor and assess vegetation health status in soil and water loss region based on remote sensing techniques and WorldView-2 imagery. VHI was constructed by three factors, i.e., the normalized mountain vegetation index, the nitrogen reflectance index and the reflectance of the yellow band, through the principal component transformation, in order to avoid the deviation induced by subjective method of weighted summation. The Hetian Basin of Changting County in Fujian Province, China, was taken as a test area to assess the vegetation health status in soil and water loss region using VHI. The results showed that the VHI could detect vegetation health status with a total accuracy of 91%. The vegetation of Hetian Basin in good, moderate and poor health status accounted for 10.1%, 49.2% and 40.7%, respectively. The vegetation of the study area was still under an unhealthy status because the soil was poor and the growth of newly planted vegetation was not good in the soil and water loss region.

Nitrification is the process of microbial oxidation of ammonia to nitrate, completed by the ammonia oxidizers (AOB and AOA) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB), sequentially. For a century, we have been learning and studying the established two-step process as the unique way for nitrification. According to the kinetic theory, there should be a one-step nitrification in the environment, that is, the whole process of nitrification (from NH 3 to NO 3 ) was completed by one microorganism, but no study could give a direct proof for the existence of this microorganism. Until the end of 2015, three different cultivated bacteria (Candidatus Nitrospira nitrosa, Candidatus Nitrospira nitrificans and Candidatus Nitrospira inopinata) and an uncultivated bacterium (Nitrospira-like orga-nism) respectively found in different environments by three research teams, were defined as complete ammonia oxidizing microorganisms (Comammox), because all of them could carry out the complete oxidation of ammonia to nitrate. The discovery of one-step nitrification and Comammox ended the 100-year-old dogma, and triggered many important scientific issues of the global nitrogen cycle, such as the ecological niche of these microorganisms in the environment and their relative contribution in nitrification. This paper made a brief overview of the discovery of one-step nitrification and Comammox.- ) was completed by one microorganism, but no study could give a direct proof for the existence of this microorganism. Until the end of 2015, three different cultivated bacteria (Candidatus Nitrospira nitrosa, Candidatus Nitrospira nitrificans and Candidatus Nitrospira inopinata) and an uncultivated bacterium (Nitrospira-like orga-nism) respectively found in different environments by three research teams, were defined as complete ammonia oxidizing microorganisms (Comammox), because all of them could carry out the complete oxidation of ammonia to nitrate. The discovery of one-step nitrification and Comammox ended the 100-year-old dogma, and triggered many important scientific issues of the global nitrogen cycle, such as the ecological niche of these microorganisms in the environment and their relative contribution in nitrification. This paper made a brief overview of the discovery of one-step nitrification and Comammox.

Based on DMSP/OLS night-light data and MODIS NDVI data for 2000, 2007 and 2013, this paper studied on characteristics of urban expansion and vegetation changes in built-up areas with nighttime light threshold extraction and vegetation index analysis using remote sensing and GIS. Results showed that the threshold method could realize the effective extraction of urban land information. In general, the urban built-up area expanded along with Hangzhou Bay in V model, and there were three expansion patterns: polygon pattern, linear pattern and point pattern. Obvious spatio-temporal variations in different cities were found in the rate and the dynamic degree of urban expansion and the compactness of urban morphology. The whole study area showed a decreasing trend in the rate and the dynamic degree of urban expansion, while the average compactness of urban morphology declined after the rise. Vegetation conditions became better in built-up areas except Jiaxing in 2000-2007, but it became worse in all cities in 2007-2013. Urban expansion had a ne-gative effect on the vegetation change in built-up areas in 2000-2013.

As a typical semi-closed bay, Jiaozhou Bay, is remarkably affected by human activities. Biogenic elements transported into the oceans by the atmospheric deposition of anthropogenic particles can lead to profound impacts on the ecosystem of Jiaozhou Bay. In this paper, the researches of atmospheric dry and wet depositions in the Jiaozhou Bay were systematically summarized from the following three aspects: study methods, variation characteristics of the fluxes and their influencing factors and the ecological effects of atmospheric deposition. The concentrations and fluxes of nitrogen species in atmospheric dry and wet depositions were very high in the Jiaozhou Bay compared with other bays, estuaries and marginal seas around the world. The dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) was the main component of the total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) and the dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) accounted for 22%-31% of TDN. However, the concentrations and fluxes of phosphate and silicate species were very low. The atmospheric deposition fluxes of (NO 3 - -N+NO 2 - -N) were slightly higher than terrestrial inputs, while the fluxes of NH 4 + -N, PO 4 3- -P and SiO 3 2- -Si were very low compared with terrestrial inputs. The concentration of total suspended particulates (TSP) in the air, the intensity of the emission sources, precipitation amount and meteorological conditions are the major factors influencing the atmospheric depositions of biogenic elements, which can increase the primary productivity, change the structure of nutrients and the structure of phytoplankton communities in surface seawater and further promote the succession of phytoplankton dominant species from diatom to dinoflagellate in the Jiaozhou Bay. On that basis, the future research should be focused on constructing the monitoring network for atmospheric dry and wet depositions, accurately quantifying the deposition rates of aerosol particles of different forms and sizes, recognizing the ecological effects and biogeochemical mechanisms of atmospheric depositions of biogenic elements and discriminating the mechanisms, fluxes and influencing factors of atmospheric deposition biogenic elements via indirect approaches such as overland runoff, sheetflood and permeation etc. It is significant for illuminating the effects of anthropogenic activities on the coastal waters as well as understanding the bio-geochemical processes of biogenic elements in marginal seas by elucidating atmospheric depositions of biogenic elements in the Jiaozhou Bay.

The effect of light intensity on the seed germination and seedling growth of Chinese fir under different light intensities (100%, 40%, 20%, 10%, 5% of full light, and the PPFD was 201.3, 77.0, 37.5, 19.2, 9.8 μmol·m -2 ·s -1 , respectively) was investigated, and the adaptive strategy of seed germination, seedling survival, growth, morphological plasticity, biomass accumulation and allocation under different light intensities was explored in this paper. The results showed that light intensity significantly affected the germination rate, survival rate, establishment rate and germination index. Germination rate reached the maximum under 40% light intensity, while survival rate and establishment rate reached the maximum at 100% light intensity. With the light intensity decreased, the stem length increased, while the root length, cotyledon length, cotyledon thickness and euphylla number declined, and basal stem diameter had no significant difference among diffe-rent light intensities. The total biomass, root biomass, stem biomass and leaf biomass were the highest under 100% light intensity. With the light intensity decreased, the photosynthesis non-photosynthesis biomass ratio and leaf biomass ratio declined, while stem biomass ratio increased, the root to shoot ratio and root biomass ratio had no significant difference among different light intensities. Low light promoted seed germination, but seedlings grew slowly with high mortality under low light. The accumulation of biomass in stem increased the plant tolerance to low light.

Huizhou-Styled Village is a typical representative of the traditional Chinese ancient villages. It preserves plentiful information of the regional culture and ecological connotation. The Huizhou-Style is the apotheosis of harmony between the Chinese ancient people and nature. The research and protection of Huizhou-Styled Village plays a very important role in fields of ecology, geography, architecture and esthetics. This paper took Chengkan Village of Anhui Province as an exa-mple, and proposed a new model of ideal ecosystem oriented in theories of Feng-shui and psychological field. The new method of characterizing 3D landscape index was introduced to explore the spatial patterns of Huizhou-Styled Village and the functionality of the composited landscape components in a quantitative way. The results indicated that, Chengkan Village showed a spatially composited pattern of "mountain-forest-village-river-forest". It formed an ideal settlement ring structure with human architecture in the center and natural landscape around in the horizontal and vertical horizons. The traditional method based on the projection distance caused the deviation of the landscape index, such as underestimating the area and distance of landscape patch. The 3D landscape index of average patch area was 6.7% higher than the 2D landscape index. The increasing rate ofarea proportion in 3D index was 1.0% higher than that of 2D index in forest lands. Area proportion of the other landscapes decreased, especially the artificial landscapes like construction and cropland landscapes. The area and perimeter metric were underestimated, whereas the shape metric and the diversity metric were overestimated. This caused the underestimation of the dominance of natural patches was underestimated and the overestimation of the dominance of artificial patches during the analysis of landscape pattern. The 3D landscape index showed that the natural elements and their combination in Chengkan Village ecosystem reflected better ecological function, the key elements and the composited landscape ecosystem preserved higher stability, connectivity and aggregation. The quantitative confirmation showed that the Huizhou-Styled Village represented by Chengkan Village is an ideal ecosystem.

Based on 7-, 17-, 30-, and 40-year-old Larix kaempferi plantations, this paper studied the influence of tree age on biomass, carbon storage and nutrient characteristics. There was significant difference in biomass and nutrient concentration of stem, bark, needle, branch and root at different development stages at individual tree level. The biomass of each organ showed a trend of increase with the increasing age. The concentrations of N, P, K decreased, Mg concentration increased at first and then decreased, and Ca concentration continued to rise with the increasing age. There was significant difference in biomass of each organ for dominant, intermediate and suppressed trees, but no significant difference in nutrient concentration. It indicated that nutrient concentration of each organ was not affected by competition. At stand level, the total biomass, carbon storage and nutrient accumulation increased with the increasing age. Compared with young stand, the growth rate of biomass, carbon storage and nutrient accumulation were increased by 217%, 218% and 56% in mature stand, respectively. It indicated L. kaempferi had a high nutrient use efficiency, and could utilize less nutrient to produce more dry matter. Except that the accumulation of P and K had a slight decrease in pre-mature stand (30 years old), other elements increased with the increasing age. N mainly concentrated in needle, Ca concentrated in stem, K and Mg concentrated in root and P was distributed evenly in different organs. The annual accumulation rates of biomass, carbon and nutrient of L. kaempferi stands decreased with the increasing age, from 7.16 t·hm -2 , 3.40 t·hm -2 and 104.64 kg·hm -2 for young stand to 3.99 t·hm -2 , 1.89 t·hm -2 and 28.64 kg·hm -2 for mature stand, respectively. It indicated that L. kaempferi plantations had great carbon sequestration potential and high nutrient consumption during young and middle ages.

In order to monitor soil water and salt content of saline soil conveniently and quickly, this paper took the typical salinization irrigation district of Xinjiang as the research object, obtained the spectral curve of soil water and salt content by using portable spectrometers based on the hyperspectral technology, transformed the original spectra of soil using the first order differential, second order differential and continuum removal methods. The results showed that the transformation of the original spectral data was beneficial to fingerprint band extraction of soil properties, and the method was not same in soils with different textures. In loam soil, continuum removal analysis was the best method for extraction of characteristic bands when the soil water content was 0% and 10%, first order differential equations were the best method when the soil water content was 15%, and second order differential equations were the best method when the soil water content was 19%. In sandy soil, continuum removal analysis was the best method for extraction of characteristic bands when the soil water content was 0%, whereas second order differential equations were the best method when soil water content was 10%, 15% or 19%. The transformed data were screened for inversion models of soil water and salt content by using the partial least squares regression method. When thesalinity was < 6.38 mS·cm -1 in loam soil and < 5.94 mS·cm -1 in sandy soil, the decision coefficients (R cal 2 ), internal cross validation (R cv 2 ), and external validation (R val 2 ) were greater than 0.65 (P<0.05). When the soil moisture content was less than 16% in loam soil and 12% in sandy soil, the inversion accuracy of model was higher. The results would provide a reference threshold for si-multaneously monitoring soil water and salt content in salinized areas.

In order to research into the influence of Grain to Green Project in Ziwuling forest region, this paper took three typical plantations which were Robinia pseudoacacia plantation, Pinus tabuliformis plantation, and Platycladus orientalis plantation in the Ziwuling forest region of Shaanxi Province as research objects and analyzed the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus contents of leaf, litter and soil among the three plantations. The results showed that the contents of C, N and P in the three plantations were in order of leaf > litter > soil, the contents of N and P in leaf of R. pseu-doacacia plantation were significantly higher than that of P. tabuliformis plantation and P. orientalis. Leaf N:P was 12.21, 5.36 and 6.09 in R. pseudoacacia plantation, P. tabuliformis plantation and P. orientalis plantation, respectively. It was indicated that the three species were all subject to N deficiency. C:N and C:P showed the trend of litter > leaf > soil, and N:P demonstrated the trend of leaf > litter > soil. There were highly significant positive relationships in C:N between leaf and litter in P. tabuliformis plantation. N and P in the leaf development process of R. pseu-doacacia plantation were proportionally absorbed, and proportionally remained in the litter after N and P resorption. R. pseudoacacia was the better plantation species than P. tabuliformis and P. orientalis in the south fo-rest zone on the Loess Plateau.

Based on the data of remote sensing images from Landsat in 1995 and 2015, this paper used the principal component analysis (PCA) method to determine the weights of four ecological indexes (greenness, dryness, wetness and heat), and then selected a evaluation model of remote sensing based ecological index (RSEI) to monitor and analyze the ecological environment quality of Weinan City from 1995 to 2015. The results showed that the mean values of RSEI in Weinan City increased from 0.489 to 0.556 during 1995-2015, which indicated the ecological environment qua-lity had been improved. The improved area of ecological quality was mainly distributed in the central area of Weinan City and its proportion was 49.6%. While the proportion of ecological environment degradation was 15.4%, and such areas were mainly distributed in some mine areas of Hancheng City and the southern Weinan (Weinan Section in North Qinling Mountains). The quality of ecolo-gical environment was greatly influenced by the urban planning and construction in the study area. Generally, the ecological condition of Weinan City had been improved, which benefited from the attention and investment of government.

With the technology of geographic information system (GIS), the ecosystem service va-lue (ESV) coefficient of different types of land use in Dongting Lake area was estimated in this paper by interpreting the remote-sensing image for years and combining its economic development statistics. Meanwhile, the temporal-spatial evolvement characteristics of the ESV were investigated by employing the methods of spatial statistics analysis such as spatial autocorrelation, highland clustering analysis and hotspot analysis. The results showed that the ESV of Dongting Lake area increased slightly during 2000-2013, from 3868.39 billion yuan to 3886.62 billion yuan due to the increase of wetland in the area. The areas with high ESV and low ESV were infiltrated into each other, while the areas with second high ESV embraced those areas with high and low ESV. The characteristics of ESV and its dynamic evolvement in Dongting Lake area were obviously of spatial autocorrelation and high and low value clustering, but the trend was weakened. The focus of ESV hotspot of Dongting Lake area moved to northwest slightly with a "S" track in a obviously phased manner of "quick-slow-quick".

Quantitative evaluation on the vegetation recovery after the earthquake is of great scienti-fic significance for local ecological system rebuilding and regional social-economic sustainable deve-lopment. By taking the Longxi River Basin in Dujiangyan of Sichuan Province as an example, and employing the MODIS-NDVI time-series data, this paper illustrated the dynamic changes of the ve-getation cover rates in Longxi River basin before and after the 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake by using Landsat data, and then time-space characters of the recovery rates of the damaged vegetation was quantified structurally by referring the factors of river-system and terrain. The results showed that the recovery of impaired vegetation coverage worked well from a holistic point of view, but the response of vegetation coverage to earthquake disaster showed a lagging-phenomenon. The recovery rate of damaged vegetation was significantly correlated to its distance to surrounding river systems, elevation, slope degree, and slope aspect. This finding could provide technical supports for decision-makers to intervene the recovering process after earthquake.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component of water cycle, but its measurement in high altitude mountainous region is quite difficult, resulting in the poor understanding of the temporal and spatial variations of actual ET in high altitude mountainous region. In this paper, a weighing lysimeter was used to measure the hourly ET in a grassland in the Pailugou basin in the upper reach of the Heihe River, Northwest China. Based on the measured data, diurnal variations of grassland ET over different periods were analyzed. Results indicated that snow and ice sublimation appeared during the freezing period, with a very different diurnal variation pattern compared with other three periods. During the period without sunshine, the amount of snow and ice sublimation was nearly constant. When the highest global radiation and lowest relative humidity appeared in the same period, the amount of snow and ice sublimation increased a little. The early growth period was a period when snow and ice started to melt, during which snowmelt evaporation and soil evaporation occurred at the same time. The growth period had the highest ET rate. Due to continuous rainfall events, maximum and minimum ET values appeared at the same hour. ET in the late growth period mainly came from soil evaporation, producing 3 peaks in diurnal variation, which was different from only one peak in both the early growth period and the growth period.

As the important driving factors of global change, changing precipitation and nitrogen (N) deposition play a key role in affecting our terrestrial ecosystem. However, most previous stu-dies focused on the aboveground plant community. The soil fauna, especially the ground-active arthropods were poorly understood. Using field manipulative experiment, this paper studied the effects of increased precipitation and N deposition on the soil ground-active arthropods in an old-field ecosystem of the Huanghuihai Plain. The results showed that the increased precipitation significantly enhanced the soil arthropods population density and the number of groups by 66.9% and 27.8%, respectively. Nitrogen deposition had minor effect on soil arthropods population density and number of groups, but significantly increased the formicidae and decreased the collembolans. Our results indicated the changing precipitation was the more important factor than the N deposition to restructure the soil surface arthropod community by increasing soil moisture and stimulating plant growth in the old-field of north China plain.

Taking Ebinur Lake Wetland Nature Reserve as the study area, and based on the classified result of Landsat TM images of 1998, 2006, and Landsat OLI images of 2014, this paper simulated and forecasted land use/cover types of Ebinur Lake Wetland Nature Reserve by using the CA-Markov model. In the model-building process, the transition probability matrix and the transition area matrix were obtained through the Markov model, which determined the conversion rules and iterative times of the CA model. The land use/cover pattern of the study area in 2014, 2022 and 2030 was simulated and forecasted with the CA-Markov model. Then the forecast result was compared with the actual classified data of 2014 to verify the forecast accuracy. The prediction error of land use/cover type area was not more than 6.4% in 2014, and the spatial location accuracy was 76.0%. The results showed that the forest and grassland, saline-alkali area, dry lake bed and desert had an increasing trend in 1998-2014. The saline-alkali area increased the most by 37.4% and the water body decreased by 34.8%. In 2014-2030, the areas of the forest and grassland, saline-alkali soil and desert would increase, while that of the dry lake bed, water body and other objects would decrease. This study could provide a basis for dynamic monitoring land use/cover as well as sustainable development of Ebinur Lake Wetland Nature Reserve.

Forest leaf area index (LAI) is an important indicator to describe the forest canopy structure and growth status of trees. In this paper, the Yigen area of Inner Mongolia was selected as the study area. Taken full account of the differences among different echo types, the LiDAR point cloud data were split into different single lasers. Then, intensity normalization was implemented for LiDAR point cloud data with the range between sensor and target. Based on the normalized intensity data, a new laser penetration index, called single laser beam penetration index (LPI s ), was calculated along with the calculation of traditional LPI. These two laser penetration indexes were used to estimate the forest LAI based on the theoretical model and empirical model on four different sampling scales (5, 10, 15, and 20 m), respectively, which aimed to improve the retrieval accuracy of forest LAI through laser beam splitting. The results showed that the forest LAI estimated from mean LPI s (LPI mean ) was obviously better than that from traditional LPI. In addition, both of the empirical [R 2 =0.80, mean absolute deviation (MAD)=0.11] and theoretical models (R 2 =0.77, MAD=0.16) achieved the best performances with sampling scale of 15 m. The mapping of birch forest LAI for the study area was derived by integrating both the advantages of best empirical and theoretical models.

It is of great significance to study agroecosystem health in major grain producing areas based on the theory and method of ecosystem health. This paper selected Jilin Province as the study area, and an evaluation index system of agroecosystem health was built based on the SSI-VOR conceptual framework model. Using the optimal combined weights method, comprehensive evaluation assessment, GIS spatial analysis and grey slope similarity incidence models, the spatial-temporal pattern of agroecosystem health and influence factors were analyzed from 2000 to 2011 in Jilin Pro-vince. The results indicated that, temporally, the composite index of agroecosystem health showed a rising trend in Jilin Province from 1995 to 2011, and the agroecosystem health level changed from not healthy to relatively healthy; spatially, the spatial discrepancy of agroecosystem health level tended to become larger, which remained unchanged in central area, while was gradually improved in southeast and west. The main contributors which improved the agroecosystem health level were economic driving force, environmental management and social development, while the main 'dragging' factors were ecological pressure, organization structure and input capacity. Finally, relevant measures were put forward to improve the agroecosystem health condition.

In this paper, topsoil salinity data gathered from 24 sampling sites in the Yutian Oasis were used, nine different kinds of environmental variables closely related to soil salinity were selec-ted as influencing factors, then, the spatial distribution characteristics of topsoil salinity and spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors were analyzed by combining the spatial autocorrelation with traditional regression analysis and geographically weighted regression model. Results showed that the topsoil salinity in Yutian Oasis was not of random distribution but had strong spatial dependence, and the spatial autocorrelation index for topsoil salinity was 0.479. Groundwater salinity, groundwater depth, elevation and temperature were the main factors influencing topsoil salt accumulation in arid land oases and they were spatially heterogeneous. The nine selected environmental variables except soil pH had significant influences on topsoil salinity with spatial disparity. GWR model was superior to the OLS model on interpretation and estimation of spatial non-stationary data, also had a remarkable advantage in visualization of modeling parameters.

Based on the Forest Ecosystem Services Assessment Standards (LY/T 1721－2008) issued by the State Forestry Administration, this paper evaluated four key functions of forest ecosystems, i.e., water conservation, soil conservation, carbon fixation and oxygen release, and nutrient accumulation. Focusing on the project area of Majiang County in Guizhou Province, this study provided some quantitative evidence that the implementation of the small hydropower substituting fuel project had positive effects on the values and material quantities of ecosystem service functions. The results showed that the small hydropower substituting fuel project had a significant effect on the increase of forest ecosystem services. Water conservation quantity of Pinus massoniana and Cupressus funebris plantations inside project area was 20662.04 m 3 ·hm -2 ·a -1 , 20.5% higher than outside project area, with soil conservation quantity of 119.1 t·hm -2 ·a -1 , 29.7% higher than outside project area, carbon fixation and oxygen release of 220.49 t·hm -2 ·a -1 , 40.2% higher than outside project area, and forest tree nutrition accumulation of 3.49 t·hm -2 ·a -1 , 48.5% higher than outside project area. Small hydropower substituting fuel project for increasing the quota of forest ecosystem service function value was in the order of carbon fixation and oxygen release function (71400 yuan·hm -2 ·a -1 ) > water conservation function (60100 yuan·hm -2 ·a -1 ) > tree nutrition accumulation function (13800 yuan·hm -2 ·a -1 ) > soil conservation function (8100 yuan·hm -2 ·a -1 ). Small hydropower substituting fuel project played an important role for improving the forest ecological service function value and realizing the sustainable development of forest.

According to the theory of system science, the paper took 12 central cities in Gansu Province as an example, and respectively built the quality assessment index system of population urbanization and land urbanization on the basis of scientific definition of the quality of population urbanization and land urbanization. Then the coupled coordination model was introduced to calculate the comprehensive development index and coupling coordination degree between quality of population urbanization and land urbanization by the dimension of time and space during 2005-2013. The results showed that population urbanization and land urbanization could only represent the speed of urbanization, it could not measure the quality of urbanization. Single index could only represent the urbanization development level in the narrow sense. Observed in time sequence, the quality and coupling coordination level of land and population urbanization in Gansu Province showed an overall rising trend. In general, the poorly intensive utilization of land resources was still the key factor restricting the quality of urbanization in Gansu Province. From the point of spatial pattern, in 2013, the quality of land urbanization lagged behind the quality of population urbanization to varying degrees in 11 central cities except Lanzhou, which belonged to the population urbanization lagging type. The urbanization quality of 12 central cities in Gansu Province was at an overall low coordinating stage.

Soil respiration (R s ) is the main efflux of carbon pool from soil to atmosphere. Increasing R s caused by rising temperature can result in significant change in the global carbon balance. Global mean land-surface temperature is predicted to rise by 0.3-4.8 ℃ by the end of 21 century. Therefore, how R s responds to simulated experimental warming in the natural field is one of the critical issues in global change research. Here, we reviewed the response characteristics of R s to simulated warming under different temporal and spatial patterns. Experimental warming can increase R s at the short time scale, but there was no uniform law in the long-term warming experiments, and there were differences among different ecosystems. This paper also reviewed the mechanism underlying the simulated warming response of R s . Warming can directly affect R s , and warming can also affect R s indirectly by affecting the environmental factors (e.g., soil water, soil salt, soil physical and che-mical properties), and the regulation of biological factors (e.g., photosynthesis, litter decomposition). Furthermore, we synthesized the formation mechanism of adaptability of R s to warming, including adaptability of microbes, roots and enzymes to warming, water restriction, and regulation by excessive nitrogen and the substrate supply. Finally, the future research directions were proposed. The study of micro-ecosystem of rhizosphere, characteristics and mechanism of R s under asymmetric warming should be strengthened. Also, more attention should be paid to the measurement of R s in typical phenological periods and typical weather in different seasons. The research network of R s response to simulated warming should be constructed for networking test.

Based on the constructed evaluation index system of ecological environment and economy coordinated development in Hebei Province, accompanied by introducing the Coupling Degree Mo-del, the paper estimated the ecological environment comprehensive index, the economic comprehensive index and the coupling degree of ecological environment and economy coordinated development of Hebei Province from 2000 to 2014 and 11 cities in 4 years (2000, 2006, 2010, 2014). The results showed that during the study period, the level of the coordinated development of the eco-logical environment and economy in Hebei Province had been increasing, from the brink of a recession to the well coordinated development, which had gone through 3 evident stages. The coordinating degree of ecological environment and economy of the 11 cities increased year by year, and pre-sented significant difference in spatial distribution. Through analyzing the spatial and temporal evolution mechanism of the ecological environment and economy coordinated development in Hebei Province, the policy, economy, industry and location were the key contributing factors, accordingly, suggestions on the further coordinated development of ecological environment and economy in Hebei Province were proposed.

Alpine treelines represent one of the most distinct vegetation boundaries between canopy closed montane forest and treeless alpine vegetation. This transitional ecotone is highly sensitive to global and regional climate change and is considered as an ideal indicator of such changes. Treeline studies have evolved from morphological description to various hypotheses of treeline formation. Although individual hypothesis may provide reasonable explanation locally, a generalized hypothesis that is applicable on the global scale is still lacking. Temperature is considered the limited factor controlling the distribution of alpine treeline as low temperature restricts biochemical processes of tree growth. However, which particular biochemical processes are affected by low temperature remains unknown. This paper summarized the mechanisms of treeline formation with a focus on how low temperature affects photosynthesis characteristics, nutrient characteristics, non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) and antioxidant system. We also reviewed the key issues and future perspectives in treeline research.

Accuracy estimation of oceanic primary productivity is of great significance in the assessment and management of fisheries resources, marine ecology systems, global change and other fields. The traditional measurement and estimation of oceanic primary productivity has to rely on in situ sample data by vessels. Satellite remote sensing has advantages of providing dynamic and eco-environmental parameters of ocean surface at large scale in real time. Thus, satellite remote sensing has increasingly become an important means for oceanic primary productivity estimation on large spatio-temporal scale. Combining with the development of ocean color sensors, the models to estimate the oceanic primary productivity by satellite remote sensing have been developed that could be mainly summarized as chlorophyll-based, carbon-based and phytoplankton absorption-based approach. The flexibility and complexity of the three kinds of models were presented in the paper. On this basis, the current research status for global estimation of oceanic primary productivity was analyzed and evaluated. In view of these, four research fields needed to be strengthened in further stu-dy: 1) Global oceanic primary productivity estimation should be segmented and studied, 2) to dee-pen the research on absorption coefficient of phytoplankton, 3) to enhance the technology of ocea-nic remote sensing, 4) to improve the in situ measurement of primary productivity.

Land use change has an important role in hydrological processes and utilization of water resources, and is the main driving force of water yield function of ecosystem. This paper analyzed the change of land use from 1990 to 2013 in Nansi Lake Basin, Shandong Province. The future land use in 2030 was also predicted and simulated by CLUE-S model. Based on land use scenarios, we analyzed the influence of land use change on ecosystem function of water yield in nearly 25 years through InVEST water yield model and spatial mapping. The results showed that the area of construction land increased by 3.5% in 2013 because of burgeoning urbanization process, but farmland area decreased by 2.4% which was conversed to construction land mostly. The simulated result of InVEST model suggested that water yield level of whole basin decreased firstly and increased subsequently during last 25 years and peaked at 232.1 mm in 2013. The construction land area would increase by 6.7% in 2030 based on the land use scenarios of fast urbanization, which would lead to a remarkable growth for water yield and risk of flowing flooding. However, the water yield level of whole basin would decrease by 1.2 % in 2013 if 300 meter-wide forest buffer strips around Nansi Lake were built up.

BEPSHourly is committed to simulate the ecological and physiological process of vegetation at hourly time steps, and is often applied to analyze the diurnal change of gross primary productivity (GPP), net primary productivity (NPP) at site scale because of its more complex model structure and time-consuming solving process. However, daily photosynthetic rate calculation in BEPSDaily model is simpler and less time-consuming, not involving many iterative processes. It is suitable for simulating the regional primary productivity and analyzing the spatial distribution of regional carbon sources and sinks. According to the characteristics and applicability of BEPSDaily and BEPSHourly models, this paper proposed a method of collaborative application of BEPS at daily and hourly time steps. Firstly, BEPSHourly was used to optimize the main photosynthetic parameters: the maximum rate of carboxylation (V c max ) and the maximum rate of photosynthetic electron transport (J max ) at site scale, and then the two optimized parameters were introduced into BEPSDaily model to estimate regional NPP at regional scale. The results showed that optimization of the main photosynthesis parameters based on the flux data could improve the simulate ability of the model. The primary productivity of different forest types in descending order was deciduous broad-leaved forest, mixed forest, coniferous forest in 2011. The collaborative application of carbon cycle models at different steps proposed in this study could effectively optimize the main photosynthesis parameters V c max and J max , simulate the monthly averaged diurnal GPP, NPP, calculate the regional NPP, and analyze the spatial distribution of regional carbon sources and sinks.

In order to reveal the toxicity effect and risk of co-exposure of Cu and chlorpyrifos in the current soil environment of China, using the earthworm Eisenia fetida as model organism, the effect of single, and co-exposure of Cu and chlorpyrifos on the growth and antioxidant response of earthworm were analyzed by using the methods of filter paper test and artificial soil test. The results showed that the growth rate of earthworm tended to decrease with the increase of single exposure concentrations of Cu and chlorpyrifos in artificial soil test. The mass of earthworm had a relatively flat changing rate with the co-exposure of Cu and chlorpyrifos. Using the addition of probability, the q values of different concentration groups of Cu and chlorpyrifos on the earthworm mass were less than 0.55, which indicated significant antagonistic effect. The joint effect of Cu and chlorpyrifos on the activities of CAT and SOD indicated antagonistic effect in filter paper test, while the effects of co-exposure of Cu and chlorpyrifos on the contents of GSH and MDA showed a synergy effect of low concentrations and antagonism effect of high concentrations.

With the stable development of new countryside construction and new-type urbanization, the changing of the landscape pattern in countryside attracts more attention, especially in the ethnic townships which are hardly accessible. To explore the development of these areas, it is crucial to understand the spatial and temporal variation of the landscape pattern. In this paper, the landscape pattern change was analyzed at both patch type level and landscape level based on the landscape ecology theory. The land use data (format: vector) got from Aerla Town (a typical Daur ethnic township in Inner Mongolia) for the duration from 2008 to 2013 was studied by ArcGIS platform and Fragstats. For the type level, the grassland, farmland, and forest turned into building land gra-dually. Regarding the landscape level, the landscape diversity index and landscape connectivity index were relatively low, the heterogeneity index and the landscape fragmentation were relatively high. With considering the correlation analysis and grey correlation of the above indexes as well as the social and economic development in Aerla Town, the results indicated that population change and GDP growth were the main driving forces of landscape pattern change. Finally, the driving forces which resulted in the variation of landscape pattern with the incorporation of the economic, cultural, policy, and natural effects were discussed. The research could provide basic information and theoretical foundation for the development of minority areas in Northeast China.

Shade tolerance, defined as the ability to survive and grow under low light, plays an important role in the succession of forest plant communities. The mechanism of adaptation of plants to shading has become an important topic in ecology research. In this paper, we reviewed shade tole-rance of various forest plants and examined their adaptability in terms of morphology and physiology, and discussed the plasticity on growth traits, biomass distribution, crown structure, leaf morphology and physiology, leaf anatomical structure, photosynthetic parameters, carbohydrate allocation, water and nutrient utilization related to shade tolerance of forest plants. Finally, we discussed some problems with previous studies, and proposed possible future research issues.

This paper predicted the potential distribution area of the spruce forest on the central Tianshan Mountain, through determining the site index thresholds, using 3S and spatial modeling technologies to build a site index model with water, heat, terrain and other factors, based on the current site conditions there. The results showed that the potential distribution area simulated by the site index model was not significantly different with the current actual distribution area, but had a significant difference with the non-spruce forest area. Based on the built site index model, there was a large potential distribution area, which occupied 6.4% of the total research area, i.e., 7.01×10 3 hm 2 of forest lower boundary zones, glades, shady and half shady slope areas, and could be used for the future forest development.