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Various soil erosion control techniques (SECTs) have been applied for decades. Yet, dynamic development of SECTs on a global scale has not been fully explored in the literature. We identified 779 publications to summarize spatial and temporal patterns of SECT development across the world. To achieve this goal, we asked (a) how many SECTs have been applied in the real world? (b) How do susceptible erosion areas use SECTs? And (c) what are the temporal patterns of SECT development? We found 183 sub-categories of SECTs, including 85 sub-categories of engineering techniques, 76 sub-categories of cropping techniques, and 22 sub-categories of biological techniques. In contrast, there is a great deal of interest in the evaluation of biological techniques and cropping techniques for soil erosion control. SECT research has evolved from an initial focus on a single SECT evaluation to a combination of SECTs evaluations (e.g. a combination of conservation tillage and mulch). Likewise, 64% of SECT cases were found in six countries with a different focal SECT among them: China and Spain targeted vegetation restoration, Brazil and the United States focused on conservation tillage, Ethiopia prioritized mixed SECTs, and India emphasized on check dam. Lastly, SECT application started from site erosion control (1930s–1980s), watershed management (1980s–2010s), to sustainable management (after 2010s). We identify the gaps between SECT application and research and a lack of an international platform for knowledge sharing, and propose that a combination of different SETCs in a balanced way is a reliable approach to obtaining the goal of sustainable soil management.

Northwest China is significantly affected by sandstorm disasters. To mitigate the negative impacts of sandstorm events, it is critical to understand the spatio-temporal variations in typical sand and dust storms and their influencing factors. In this work, using ground-based measurements of particulate matter and remote sensing data such as MODIS, OMI, and CALIPSO data, the sources of aerosol pollution and aerosol optical properties of a typical sandstorm event that occurred in Northwest China in 2018 was studied. In addition, the HYSPLIT model was used to explore the air mass trajectories in order to analyze the sand and dust migration process during the sandstorm event. Furthermore, the wind erosion sensitivity of Northwest China was analyzed via single factor analysis and multi-factor superposition of wind field intensity, soil drought index, vegetation coverage, and relief amplitude. Finally, the region of the study area having a high comprehensive wind erosion sensitivity was identified. The results showed that the PM10 concentrations exceeded 400 µg/m3 and the PM2.5/PM10 ratio did not exceeded 0.6 during the sandstorm event, indicating that natural particulate matter was dominant in the ambient air. At the epicenter of pollution, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 550 nm was 0.75–1. By combining AOD data with wind speed and direction data from field observation stations, it was found that the sandstorm event in 2018 mainly occurred between 1 April and 3 April, and affected all of Northwest China on 2 April and 3 April. The absorbed aerosol index (AAI) ranged between 2.5 and 4, indicating that the Taklimakan Desert was the main source of sandstorm events in Northwest China. The CALIPSO total attenuated backscatter coefficient at 532 nm indicated that the main component of tropospheric aerosol in this region was distributed in the range of 0–12.5 km. The simulated airflow track showed that it had the same dust source regions as AAI index studies. Moreover, investigation of wind erosion sensitivity in the study areas indicated that the Taklimakan Desert and other desert regions were the main ecologically sensitive areas. These conclusions can provide references and suggestions for the mitigation of damage caused by sandstorm events, in addition to the enhancement of ecological governance.

This study proposed the measuring models for the energy efficiency and carbon efficiency of the tourism industry in destination by the detailed bottom-up analysis method, the theory of life cycle assessment, and material flow. The Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area (WSHIA) in China was chosen as the research area; the energy efficiency and carbon efficiency of tourism industry in the WSHIA were measured and analyzed from 1979 to 2015. The research results showed that energy efficiency and carbon efficiency of tourism sectors and the whole tourism industry were improved with the evolution of the stage of tourism life cycle. There was a big discrepancy in energy efficiency and carbon efficiency among different sectors of tourism industry. Tourism activity had the highest of direct and total energy efficiencies and carbon efficiencies. Compared with the industries, the tourism industry in the WSHIA belonged to the low energy consumption and green low-carbon industry. The energy and environmental policies and the different strategies on the improvement of energy efficiency and carbon efficiency of tourism industry should be formulated and implemented by the government sector of tourism management and the tourism enterprises for green and low-carbon development of tourism destination.

Ecological environment assessment can not only provide significant references for effective solutions to regional ecological problems, but also promote the benign interaction of socio-economic-ecological development. This study selected the Heihe River Basin (HRB) as the typical area to comprehensively evaluate the ecological environment from 2010 to 2030 based on the dynamics of land system (DLS) model, which is coupled with the biological abundance index (BAI), vegetation coverage index (VCI), water density index (WDI), land degradation index (LDI), and eco-environment quality index (EQI). The results indicate that the BAI and VCI will be high in the south and east, low in the north and west in general. Under the future baseline scenario, the changes of biological abundance, vegetation coverage, and deteriorating land in the midstream and downstream regions will may seriously hinder restoration of the ecological environment. In particular, the BAI in the midstream and downstream regions will decline more rapidly, with a rate of 10.30% and 18.59%, respectively. The water area will be scattered and less abundant overall, but the WDI in the midstream, that is up to 3.86 in 2030, will be higher than that in other regions. Results also show that the regions with high EQI are mainly located in the northeast and south region. It is predicted that the ecological fragile zones in the future will mainly distribute in the midstream and downstream regions, especially in Jiayuguan City and Jinta County. The EQI will drop by 44.28% and 11.40% during 2010-2030 without external conditions intervened. In addition, Qilian Mountain, Jiuquan City, Gaotai County, Linze County, and Shandan County will also have relatively strong recovery capacities under the influence of ecological policies. All above could provide the basis for the development of future watershed ecological environment management and protection planning.

In arid regions, land development and degradation (LDD) is sustained by the undesirable land development, human production and living, and climate change. Therefore, the understanding of LDD processes and their driving mechanism in the arid or semi-arid regions is significant to guarantee the sustainable development of ecological environment. This study explored the critical LDD processes in the Heihe River Basin (HRB) during 1990-2010 with the spatio-temporal evaluation of critical land use dynamics and its land quality changing trends. Then, the driving mechanism of cultivated land development process, grassland degradation process and water resource change process were analyzed by a simultaneous equations model which took the interaction of three processes into account. The results showed that the mutual transfers of cultivated land were primarily gathered in the middle reaches from 1990 to 2010. Its area grew by 13.5% and the average dynamic degree remained at 0.61%. The transfers between grassland and cultivated land, unused land were more remarkable, which led to the decline of grassland quality and even grassland degradation. Water area maintained a dynamic balance with almost unchanged area, but its dynamic trend was initially increasing and then decreasing. However, the average degradation of land quality in the whole study area is continuously alleviated. These changes were mainly due to the interaction of the LDD processes above, as well as socio-economic and climate change. Among them，agricultural research investments could restrain the unordered expansion of cultivated land resource for a relatively short period of time. Meanwhile, the variable of whether it is the main grain producing county is the main driver of grassland and water resource degradation in this region. These conclusions will provide scientific references for ecological land restoration and land quality improvement in the HRB.

It is significant to clarify the driving mechanism of the forest ecosystem changes at different scales in Northeast China with serious forest degradation. With Changbai Mountains in Northeast China as the study area, this study integrated multi–source data to explore the spatio–temporal changes of Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and its spatial agglomeration patterns, and probed its multi–level driving mechanism based on the Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM). The results showed the overall NPP in the study area had a gradual declining trend from southeast to northwest from 2001 to 2015. Besides, the ecological risk regions, including Low-Low (L–L) and High–Low (H–L) cluster types, expanded from 27.56% during 2001–2008 to 28.21% during 2008–2015, suggesting the local departments should focus on optimizing these regions and strengthen the construction of complex forests with large age differences to make the ecological environment healthier. In addition, results from the HLM suggested that key driving factors, e.g., the precipitation and vegetation coverage rate, had significant promoting effects on NPP at the grid scale. Whereas the soil organic matter content, distance to the highway, irrigation rate, percentage of the disaster area had significant inhibitory effects (p

Net primary productivity (NPP) lays the foundation for provision of various ecosystem services, and understanding the impacts of potential influencing factors on NPP is of great significance to formulating appropriate management measures to guarantee the sustainable provision of essential ecosystem services. This study analyzed the impacts of potential influencing factors on NPP in the lower Heihe River Basin, a typical arid and semi-arid region in China. First, NPP was estimated with the C-FIX model, and then the multilevel model was used to analyze the impacts of potential influencing factors on NPP during 2000-2008. Finally decomposition analysis was used to further analyze the contribution of influencing factors to NPP change during 2000-2008. The average NPP increased by approximately 9.07% during 2000-2008, and results of the multilevel model indicate that both the socioeconomic variables and demographic variables are useful in explaining NPP change. In particular, coefficients of rainfall and evapotranspiration which represent the water availability reached 0.0456 and 0.2956, respectively. Results of decomposition analysis suggested that the water availability played an important role in increasing NPP, with a contribution rate of 44.17%, and it is necessary to carry out some policies that can promote the water use efficiency to increase NPP under the background of climate change and intensified human activities. There are some uncertainties in the results of this study, but these results still can provide valuable reference information for the water resource management to increase the ecosystem service supply in the lower Heihe River Basin. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

With the rising pressure due to energy consumption and costs of environmental protection and recovery, industrial transfer from the eastern to central and western areas has surged in China. However, extremely fragile ecological conditions and severe water shortage are significant hurdles for industry development in Western China. Whether the vulnerable environment can bear the pollution caused by the transferred industry from Eastern China becomes a significant issue. This study firstly estimates energy and environmental costs in different areas of China, and assesses the necessity to upgrade the industrial structure of Qinghai Province. Then the emissions of waste water, waste gas, and smoke caused by transferred industries are calculated by Input-Output Model. On the basis of the effect analysis of waste emission on environment, pollution risks of Qinghai province are assessed. The results illustrate that the costs of environmental protection and recovery in China have a gradient distribution, of which the energy efficiency is lower while environmental costs are higher in Western China. Industrial structure adjustment has different impacts on the pollution of different sectors. Although the development of machinery and equipment, hotels and catering services, and real estate, leasing, and business services has increased the emission of pollutants, it is offset by the decreasing emissions caused by other industries such as construction and metal products. Therefore, although economic development will increase environmental pollution, industrial adjustments can effectively decrease waste water and waste gas emissions to reduce the pollution risk. It should be noted that there are still tremendous challenges for industrial transfer in Qinghai Province to coordinate the environment and industry development.

This study applies the Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model to simulating the land cover under the designed scenarios and then analyzes the effects of land cover conversion on energy flux in the semiarid grassland area of China with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The results indicate that the grassland will show a steadily upgrowing trend under the coordinated environmental sustainability (CES) scenario. Compared to the CES scenario, the rate of increase in grassland cover is lower, while the rate of increase in urban land cover will be higher under the rapid economic growth (REG) scenario. Although the conversion from cropland to grassland will reduce the energy flux, the expansion of urban area and decreasing of forestry area will bring about more energy flux. As a whole, the energy flux of near surface will obviously not change under the CES scenario, and the climate therefore will not be possible to be influenced greatly by land cover change. The energy flux under the REG scenario is higher than that under the CES scenario. Those research conclusions can offer valuable information for the land use planning and climate change adaptation in the semiarid grassland area of China.

The land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) is the synthetic result of natural processes and human activities; it largely depends on the surface vegetation conditions, and the mutual conversion among land cover types can accelerate or alleviate the regional and global climate changes. Aiming at analyzing the regional climatic effects of the conversion from grassland to forestland, especially in the long term perspective, we carried out the comparison simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model in Fujian province, results indicated that this conversion had a significant influence on the regional climate; the annual average temperature decreased by 0.11°C and the annual average precipitation increased by 46 mm after 11.2% of the grassland was converted into the forestland in the study area from 2000 to 2008. In the future (form 2010 to 2050), the conversion from grassland to forestland is significant under two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) (RCP6 and RCP8.5); the spatial pattern of this conversion under the two scenarios is simulated by dynamic of land system (DLS); then, the regional climate effects of the conversion are simulated using WRF model.

With the water and soil conservation forests ofRobinia pseudoacaciain the Malian beach of Hongqi farm, Ji County, Shanxi province, as the research object, this study estimated the potential evapotranspiration in the open space outside the forest and at the heights of 3 m, 6 m, and 10 m in the forests with the climate data during 2011-2012 and the upgraded Penman-Monteith formula; then, this study explored the microclimate characteristics inside and outside theRobinia pseudoacaciaforest and thereafter revealed the vertical variation rules of potential evapotranspiration ofRobinia pseudoacacia. The results indicate that the air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and potential evapotranspiration at different heights above the ground surface showed similar changing trends, but with some variation during different periods. In addition, the weather also had impacts on the potential evapotranspiration. In April, July, and October, the change of potential evapotranspiration of theRobinia pseudoacaciaforests showed a bimodal curve in the sunny days and rainy days, while it showed a single-peak curve with quite small fluctuation in the rainy days. However, it showed a single-peak pattern even in the sunny days in January, and it showed no fluctuation in the snowy days in January.

Land Use/Land Cover change (LUCC) is a key aspect of global environmental change, which has a significant impact on climate change. In the background of increasing global warming resulting from greenhouse effect, to understand the impact of land use change on climate change is necessary and meaningful. In this study, we choose China as the study area and explore the possible land use change trends based on the AgLU module and ERB module of global change assessment model (GCAM model and Global Change Assessment Model). We design three scenarios based on socioeconomic development and simulated the corresponding structure change of land use according to the three scenarios with different parameters. Then we simulate the different emission of CO2under different scenarios based on the simulation results of structure change of land use. At last, we choose the most suitable scenario that could control the emission of CO2best and obtain the relatively better land use structure change for adaption of climate change. Through this research we can provide a theoretical basis for the future land use planning to adapt to climate change.

Ecological risk assessment is of great significance to promoting the rational management effectively for the oil-polluted areas. A comprehensive evaluation method of ecological risk, including probabilistic risk assessment and regional ecological risk assessment, is developed through employing the contaminant benzo[a]pyrene as an indicator to assess ecological risk of five oil mining plots, respectively in Yellow River Delta. In this study, firstly we evaluate the ecological risk probability of five oil mining plots using overlapping area of probabilistic curves, and the results show that local ecological risk varies between the maximum 0.4 and the minimum 0.01. Then we overlay boundaries of five administrative divisions in Yellow River Delta and the spatial distribution patterns of ecosystems to generate new risk receptor plaques, and calculate the integrated value of 30 specifically classified plaques for comprehensive evaluation of ecological risk. The results, fluctuating within the range of 0.00005 and 0.25, indicate that local government should be vigilant to ecological risk of benzo[a]pyrene to some extent, although the current situation is not severe in whole.

Food safety and its related influencing factors in China are the hot research topics currently, and cultivated land conversion is one of the significant factors influencing food safety in China. Taking the North China Plain as the study area, this paper examines the changes of cultivated land area using satellite images, estimates land productivity from 1985 to 2005 using the model of Estimation System for Land Productivity (ESLP), and analyzes the impact of cultivated land conversion on the land production. Compared with the grain yield data from statistical yearbooks, the results indicate that ESLP model is an effective tool for estimating land productivity. Land productivity in the North China Plain showed a slight decreasing trend from 1985 to 2005, spatially, increased from the north to the south gradu- ally, and the net changes varied in different areas. Cultivated land area recorded a marginal decrease of 8.0 × 10 5 ha, mainly converted to other land uses. Cultivated land conversion had more significant negative impacts on land produc- tion than land productivity did. Land production decreased by about 6.48 × 10 6 t caused by cultivated land conversion between 1985 and 2005, accounting for 91.9% of the total land production reduction. Although the land productivity increased in Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, it can not offset the overall adverse effects caused by cultivated land con- version. Therefore, there are significant meanings to control the cultivated land conversion and improve the land pro- ductivity for ensuring the land production in the North China Plain.

With the economic development and population growth, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively to meet the rapidly growing demand for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has led to a substantial and largely irreversible loss of the biodiversity on earth. The ecosystem risk is created as a new concept to understand the environmental problems. Therefore, it is important to develop quantitative methods for regional ecosystem risk analysis. Yellow River Delta is the widest, most intact and youngest delta both in China and in the world; its ecosystem environment is much more vulnerable due to its special location and industrial structure. Therefore, it is very important to manage them wisely and strategically. Therefore, Yellow River Delta is selected as the case area to reveal the impacts of economic development on ecosystem risk in this study. This study selected the ecological quality index to show the potential ecosystem risk and estimated the impacts of economic development on ecosystem risk using the panel data model on the pixel level based on the GIS, RS technique. It's found that the economic development will have impacts on the ecological environment to a certain degree, however, these impacts can exchange to a greater degree with the development. Then more funds and advanced technologies can be used to promote the intensive development of land use, which may decrease the impacts of economic development on the environment. Therefore, we need to ensure the coordinated development of the economy and ecological environment. The research results provide meaningful decision-making information for the urbanization process and environmental protection in the Yellow River Delta.

There is plenty of forests in Northeast China which contributes a lot to the conservation of water and land resources, produces timber products, and provides habitats for a huge number of wild animals and plants. With changes of socio-economic factors as well as the geophysical conditions, there are dramatic changes on the spatial patterns of forest area. In this sense, it is of great significance to shed light on the dynamics of forest area changes to find the underlining reasons for shaping the changing patterns of forest area in Northeast China. To explore the dynamics of forest area change in Northeast China, an econometric model is developed which is composed of three equations identifying forestry production, conversion from open forest to closed forest and conversion from other land uses to closed forest so as to explore the impacts on the forest area changes from demographic, social, economic, location and geophysical factors. On this basis, we employ the Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model to simulate land-use conversions between forest area and non-forest cover and the land-use conversions within the sub-classes of forest area for the period 2000-2020 under business as usual scenario, environmental protection scenario and economic growth scenario. The simulation results show that forest area will expand continuously and there exist various kinds of changing patterns for the sub-classes of forest area, for example, closed forest will expand continuously and open forest and shrub will decrease a little bit, while area of other forest will keep intact. The research results provide meaningful decision-making information for conserving and exploiting the forest resources and making out the planning for forestry production in the Northeast China region.

It is of great practical significance to construct a water-based ecological network in arid and semi-arid areas. The spatial distribution of water resources is one of the most important factors in determining the ecological stability of such areas. In this study, groundwater level trends were analyzed with a model called Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). The temporal and spatial evolution of groundwater depth data from 1990 to 2016 were analyzed. The surface water bodies were analyzed using a point pattern analysis method. Based on this, a water-based ecological network was constructed with a minimum cumulative resistance surface model. The study indicated that the trend lines for the groundwater tables of 17 wells could be divided into five types in Denko County. The landscape types that changed from a desert landscape to an oasis landscape had a positive impact on groundwater. Precipitation trend was related to the spatial distribution of the groundwater depth, and the spatial pattern of the water nodes was characterized by a small-scale highly aggregated distribution and a large-scale uniform distribution in Denko County. These results suggest that for the stability of arid and semi-arid ecological environments, the appropriate human intervention (such as construction of an artificial oasis) is of great significance. Based on the analysis of groundwater and surface water bodies, a water-based ecological network in Denko County, which consisted of 391 ecological sources and 7360 ecological corridors, was constructed in 2016. The water-based ecological network constructed in this study was more sustainable and stable, and also suitable for arid and semi-arid areas, which is of great practical significance and application value.

Based on field survey and statistical analysis, the immediate impacts of the Wenchuan Earthquake happened on May 12, 2008, are evaluated from two aspects, i.e., the influence on the prices and yields of grain and pork products in the local region and that on China. Wenchuan Earthquake, undoubtedly, has some negative effects on the local agricultural yields in Sichuan Province. It has caused immediate impacts on the grain and livestock breeding industry in the earthquake worst-hit counties. For example, due to the earthquake, the grain yields in Sichuan Province will decreased more than 0.4% and the pork productions decrease 5% at least. Thus, prices of grain and pork products are likely to rise in local mountainous areas over a short term. Our studying results that the disaster rate, the hazard rate and the complete loss rate of grain productions are 18%, 10% and 6% respectively in the earthquake worst-hit counties, while the disaster rate in the eastern plain areas even reach to 30%-49%. Even so, the results of model analysis for sample survey indicates that Wenchuan Earthquake has caused only marginal impacts on agricultural production, does not heavily hurt the stability of the prices and yields of grain and pork products at the national level. In other words,Wenchuan Earthquake had not affected the overall situation of national agricultural production. It is estimated that the reduction rate of national grain yield is as low as 0.006%, and the price changes of grain and pork products are no more than 0.5% and 2.2% respectively.

Water and heat fluxes of terrestrial ecosystem play an important role in the sustainable development of ecosystem services. In this chapter, we first investigated the spatial variation of heat fluxes and surface temperature in an inland irrigation area of the northern China. Irrigated agriculture has the potential to alter regional to global climate significantly. We investigate how irrigation will affect regional climate in the future in an inland irrigation area of northern China, focusing on its effects on heat fluxes and near-surface temperature. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, we compare simulations among three land cover scenarios: the control scenario (CON), the irrigation scenario (IRR), and the irrigated cropland expansion scenario (ICE). Our results show that the surface energy budgets and temperature are sensitive to changes in the extent and spatial pattern of irrigated land. Conversion to irrigated agriculture at the contemporary scale leads to an increase in annual mean latent heat fluxes of 12.10 W m−2, a decrease in annual mean sensible heat fluxes of 8.85 W m−2, and a decrease in annual mean temperature of 1.3 °C across the study region. Further expansion of irrigated land increases annual mean latent heat fluxes by 18.08 W m−2, decreases annual mean sensible heat fluxes by 12.31 W m−2, and decreases annual mean temperature by 1.7 °C. Our simulated effects of irrigation show that changes in land use management such as irrigation can be an important component of climate change and need to be considered together with greenhouse forcing in climate change assessments. Then, the spatial variation of surface temperature and precipitation due to grassland conversion to forestry area in southeast China was examined. The land use/land cover change (LUCC) is the synthetic result of natural processes and human activities; it largely depends on the surface vegetation conditions, and the mutual conversion among land cover types can accelerate or alleviate the regional and global climate change. Aiming at analyzing the regional climatic effects of the conversion from grassland to forestland, especially in the long-term perspective, we carried out the comparison simulation using the WRF model in Fujian Province, and results indicated that this conversion had a significant influence on the regional climate; the annual average temperature decreased by 0.11 °C, and the annual average precipitation increased by 46 mm after 11.2 % of the grassland was converted into the forestland in the study area from 2000 to 2008. In the future (from 2010 to 2050), the conversion from grassland to forestland is significant under two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) (RCP6 and RCP8.5); the spatial pattern of this conversion under the two scenarios is simulated by dynamics of land system (DLS); then, the regional climate effects of the conversion are simulated using WRF model. Further, the spatial variation of surface heat fluxes due to land use change across China was estimated. We estimate the heat flux changes caused by the projected land transformation over the next 40 years across China to improve the understanding of the impacts of land dynamics on regional climate. We use the WRF model to investigate these impacts in four representative land transformation zones, where reclamation, overgrazing, afforestation, and urbanization dominate the LUCC in each zone, respectively. As indicated by the significant variance of albedo due to different LUCCs, different surface properties cause great spatial variance of the surface flux. From the simulation results, latent heat flux increases by 2 and 21 W/m2 in the reclamation and afforestation regions, respectively. On the contrary, overgrazing and urban expansion result in decrease of latent heat flux by 5 and 36 W/m2, correspondingly. Urban expansion leads to an average increase of 40 W/m2 of sensible heat flux in the future 40 years, while reclamation, afforestation, and overgrazing result in the decrease of sensible heat flux. Results also show that reclamation and overgrazing lead to net radiation decrease by approximately 4 and 7 W/m2, respectively; however, afforestation and urbanization lead to net radiation increase by 6 and 3 W/m2, respectively. The simulated impacts of projected HLCCs on surface energy fluxes will inform sustainable land management and climate change mitigation. Finally, we summarized the predicted impacts of land use change on surface temperature in the typical areas around the world. This study focuses on the potential impacts of large-scale LUCC on surface temperature from a global perspective. As important types of LUCC, urbanization, deforestation, cultivated land reclamation, and grassland degradation have effects on the climate, the potential changes of the surface temperature caused by these four types of large-scale LUCC from 2010 to 2050 are downscaled, and this issue is analyzed worldwide along with RCPs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The first case study presents some evidence of the effects of future urbanization on surface temperature in the Northeast megalopolis of the USA. In order to understand the potential climatological variability caused by future forest deforestation and vulnerability, we chose Brazilian Amazon region as the second case study. The third selected region in India is a typical region of cultivated land reclamation, where the possible climatic impacts are explored. In the fourth case study, we simulate the surface temperature changes caused by future grassland degradation in Mongolia. Results show that the temperature in built-up area would increase obviously throughout the four land types. In addition, the effects of all four large-scale LUCCs on monthly average temperature change would vary from month to month with obviously spatial heterogeneity.

This chapter focuses on the climate effect of ecological restoration programs in China. The fourth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4) indicated that the human activities are a significant influencing factor of climate change. Deforestation, grassland degradation, and desertification, which are mainly induced by human activities, have been greatly intensified due to the irrational exploitation of the natural resources, rapid population growth, and the expansion of road network in the past decades. Some ecological restoration programs have been recently carried out, e.g., Green for Grain Project, which can affect the climate through not only the carbon sink but also the thermal properties of the land surface.

In climate modeling, land use data is applied as underlying surfaces and definitively determines the simulation results of regional climate. Researches show that Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) not only affects the terrestrial ecosystem biodiversity, energy balance, water cycle, but also exerts influence on climate and social economy (Berg et al. 2010; Liu and Diamond 2005). Besides, LUCC is a significant performance of material and energy interactions between human and global environment.

1 Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100101, China 2Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India 3School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100038, China 4Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA 5Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991, USA

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a modelling framework to simulate large-scale land use changes, and its effect on the structural and functional diversity of the ecosystem and social-economy based on the remotely sensed digital images. The improved DLS model is developed with three scenarios in China from 2001 to 2020. The projection results show that obvious land use changes will take place in the forestry area, grassland, cultivated land and unused land. Dramatic changes will appear in Cultivated area in Northeast China, Huang-Huai-Hai plain and Southwest China. The changes of forestry area are characterized by regional diversification. Grassland decreases mainly along the Great Wall of Inner Mongolia and on Tibets Plateau. The newly expanded urban land, comparably smaller, distributes mainly around the old towns or residential centers. There is no obvious change in water area. The unused area shrinks with the expansion of forest and grass area in Western China. Based on this study, the capability of improved DLS modelling framework in projecting the LUCC scenarios was tested successfully, and a conclusion was made that DLS model is an useful model in scenario construction.

The purpose of this study is to examine the conversions of forests in Northeast China during 1988-2005 by using a 1-km area percentage data model (1-km APDM) with remote sensing data and to find the spatiotemporal characteristics of land conversions between forests and other land uses/covers and internal conversions between forest cover types. Data were derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) images of bands 3, 5, and 4 acquired in 1988, 1995, 2000, and 2005. Research results show that in the period between 1988 and 2005, the forest area in Northeast China underwent dramatic changes, and 4.11 million ha of forest area was aggregately lost because of the conversions of forests to other land uses/covers; at the same time, the forest area also gained 2.00 million ha because of the conversions from other land uses/covers to forests. The results also demonstrate the forest degradation resulting from the conversions between different forest cover types. This research demonstrates the feasibility and importance of using the 1-km APDM at a finer resolution to trace the spatiotemporal patterns of the forest conversions.