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The Cryogenian is a critical period in the history of the Earth. It is marked by multiple extreme climate changes that caused alternating global glacial and interglacial intervals. These dramatically changed the sedimentary system, and metal ores and source rocks distributed widely during this period. Therefore, studying the Cryogenian stratigraphic framework and sedimentary basins is important to improve the stratigraphic resolution for metal mineral and hydrocarbon prospecting and exploration in China. This review paper firstly divides three tectonic‐stratigraphic regions in China in the Cryogenian, including the tectonic‐stratigraphic regions of Great South China, Xingmeng‐Tarim, and North China. Secondly, geochronologic data and geological records are combined to clearly depict the Cryogenian sedimentary sequence of continental blocks and micro‐continental blocks in different tectonic‐stratigraphic regions. The results were used to propose a new comparison scheme of stratigraphy for the Cryogenian in China. Finally, according to differences of sedimentary evolution and tectonic evolvement, sedimentary basins and their lithofacies paleogeography are identified and summarized, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses the construction of eco-cities as technological fixes to concerns over climate change, Peak Oil, and other scenarios in the transition towards 'green capitalism'. It argues for a critical engagement with new-build eco-city projects, first by highlighting the inequalities which mean that eco-cities will not benefit those who will be most impacted by climate change: the citizens of the world's least wealthy states. Second, the paper investigates the foundation of eco-city projects on notions of crisis and scarcity. Third, there is a need to critically interrogate the mechanisms through which new eco-cities are built, including the land market, reclamation, dispossession and 'green grabbing'. Lastly, a sustained focus is needed on the multiplication of workers' geographies in and around these 'emerald cities', especially the ordinary urban spaces and lives of the temporary settlements housing the millions of workers who move from one new project to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The biases in the Global Circulation Models ( GCMs) are crucial for understanding future climate changes. Currently, most bias correction methodologies suffer from the assumption that model bias is stationary. This paper provides a non-stationary bias correction model, termed residual-based bagging tree ( RBT) model, to reduce simulation biases and to quantify the contributions of single models. Specifically, the proposed model estimates the residuals between individual models and observations, and takes the differences between observations and the ensemble mean into consideration during the model training process. A case study is conducted for 10 major river basins in Mainland China during different seasons. Results show that the proposed model is capable of providing accurate and stable predictions while including the non-stationarities into the modelling framework. Significant reductions in both bias and root mean squared error are achieved with the proposed RBT model, especially for the central and western parts of China. The proposed RBT model has consistently better performance in reducing biases when compared with the raw ensemble mean, the ensemble mean with simple additive bias correction, and the single best model for different seasons. Furthermore, the contribution of each single GCM in reducing the overall bias is quantified. The single model importance varies between 3.1% and 7.2%. For different future scenarios ( RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5), the results from RBT model suggest temperature increases of 1.44, 2.59, and 4.71 °C by the end of the century, respectively, when compared with the average temperature during 1970-1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquiring freshwater resources is a necessary component of sustainable human settlement subject to increasing pressure from population and climate changes. This sometimes scarce resource primarily comes from rivers, and international river basins ( IRBs), where watersheds and watercourses cross political boundaries, are often spaces of great political tension and conflict worldwide. Such conflict potential has garnered interest from a wide range of research communities, and each emphasises public access to hydrologic data as integral to successful international management of IRBs. However; these hydrologic data, especially measurements of river flow rate, are often closely guarded state secrets. Satellites have been cited as a key technology set to challenge this data monopoly that have yet been unable to calculate river flow rate without some form of guarded ancillary data. Now, at-many-stations hydraulic geometry ( AMHG) offers a means of circumventing data limitations without any a priori information, and the forthcoming NASA/ CNES Surface Water and Ocean Topography ( SWOT) satellite also promises to estimate flow rates solely from its novel measurements following launch. In this paper, we explore how these newly available estimates of river flow rate could reconfigure water-management and interstate relations in IRBs, and demonstrate AMHG, for two cases: the Ganges- Brahmaputra and Mekong. For these basins we find that satellite flow rate retrievals will likely reinforce and favour state-level negotiations of water resource governance. Also, satellite flow retrievals can have the direct, concrete effect of improving hydrologic understanding of the upstream Ganges- Brahmaputra, a sorely needed advance that will positively benefit millions of Bangladeshis and affect state-level interactions between India, China, and Bangladesh. Finally, we avoid offering prescriptive water management solutions for each case, as local stakeholders will ultimately determine if and how such satellite retrievals will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a mixed-method approach to investigate smallholder perceptions of climate change in the Loess Plateau region of China. We combine qualitative and quantitative research methods with climate data analysis to gauge the climatic changes smallholders have perceived over the last 30 years, as well as how these changes have been experienced. At two research sites, each method produced markedly different results. Drawing on the work of feminist political ecologists and other geographers, we suggest that the dissonance between data sets generated using different research methods arises because each method produces knowledge that is partial and situated. To explain the contradictions between smallholder perceptions of climate change across the qualitative and quantitative methods and their disagreement with the climate record, we adopt aspects of assemblage theory and the dwelling perspective to suggest that smallholder knowledge of climate change is structured through their observations of and interactions with dynamic, networked socio-natural assemblages. We argue that a better understanding of the conduits through which perceptions and experiences of climate change come into being, and hence how climate knowledge is shaped, is necessary to account for the multiple epistemologies through which climate change is known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]