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The bacteria inhabiting brackish lake environments in arid or semi-arid regions have not been thoroughly identified. In this study, the 454 pyrosequencing method was used to study the sedimentary bacterial community composition (BCC) and diversity in Lake Bosten, which is located in the arid regions of northwestern China. A total of 210,233 high-quality sequence reads and 8,427 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were successfully obtained from 20 selected sediment samples. The samples were quantitatively dominated by members of Proteobacteria (34.1% ± 11.0%), Firmicutes (21.8% ± 21.9%) and Chloroflexi (13.8% ± 5.2%), which accounted for more than 69% of the bacterial sequences. The results showed that (i) Lake Bosten had significant spatial heterogeneity, and TOC(total organic carbon), TN(total nitrogen) and TP(total phosphorus) were the most important contributors to bacterial diversity; (ii) there was lower taxonomic richness in Lake Bosten, which is located in an arid region, than in reference lakes in eutrophic floodplains and marine systems; and (iii) there was a low percentage of dominant species in the BCC and a high percentage of unidentified bacteria. Our data help to better describe the diversity and distribution of bacterial communities in contaminated brackish lakes in arid regions and how microbes respond to environmental changes in these stable inland waters in arid or semi-arid regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Perspective, we discuss whether in times of quickly proceeding global environmental change, radical global interventions like "climate engineering" may gain legitimacy in China and eventually be deployed or supported. We argue that one cornerstone for whether climate engineering, and solar radiation management in particular, could gain legitimacy in China, is its current weather modification programme. In China, weather modification is institutionalized and deployed on a large scale, and current narratives around the legitimacy to intervene into the local climate may provide a rationale for interventions such as solar radiation management. In the end, in the same way as Deng Xiaoping coined the phrase "stepping on stones to cross the river" in the era of China's Industrial Civilization, narrating China's "Ecological Civilization" may want to make use of "seeding the clouds to reach the sky". [See ESM for a summary of the article in Chinese.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using remote sensing images, we provided the first complete picture of freshwater bodies in mainland China. We mapped 89,700 reservoirs, covering about 26,870 km2 and approximately 185,000 lakes with a surface area of about 82,232 km2. Despite relatively small surface area, the total estimated storage capacity of reservoirs (794 km3) is triple that of lakes (268 km3). Further analysis indicates that reservoir construction has made the river systems strongly regulated: only 6% of the assessed river basins are free-flowing; 20% of assessed river basins have enough cumulative reservoir capacity to store more than the entire annual river flow. Despite the existence of 2,721 lakes greater than 1 km2, we found that about 50 lakes greater than km2 have formed on the Tibetan Plateau resulting from climate change. More than 350 lakes of ⩾1 km2 vanished in four other major lake regions. Although the disappearance of lakes happened in the context of global climate change, it principally reflects the severe anthropogenic impacts on natural lakes, such as, the excessive plundering of water resources on the Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau and serious destruction (land reclamation and urbanization) on the eastern plains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]