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Recent research shows that China is experiencing significant greening, with afforestation initiatives being the main cause. Quantitative calculation of vegetation change influencing factors and evaluation of the contribution of afforestation to vegetation greening in China are critical to coping with climate change and improving the implementation and efficacy of forestry projects. We investigated the temporal and spatial dynamics of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 1982 to 2020, and quantified the contribution of afforestation initiatives, a typical human activity, to the dynamic changes of vegetation. The results showed that NDVI in China has primarily increased in the last 39 years. 57% of the pixels increased, 27% were stable and unchanged, and 16% decreased. Climate change was responsible for 72.34% of vegetation restoration, while human activities were responsible for 27.36% of vegetation restoration, according to residual analysis. In the future, only 14% of the regions showed continuous growth of the NDVI, while the remaining regions showed obvious antipersistence (59% will go from increasing to decreasing, and 22% will go from decreasing to increasing). The contribution of climate factors to vegetation change will decrease in the future, and human activities will become more complex. Except for Huaihe River and Taihu Lake (SPHRTL), other forestry projects showed an increasing trend of NDVI after the implementation of ecological engineering. However, due to differences in climate conditions and ecological engineering implementation, there are differences in the benefits of forestry projects. Some forestry project areas still have obvious vegetation degradation, and appropriate forestry management is necessary. This work provides a quantitative analysis of vegetation change and its driving factors in China, which will help to cope with future climate change and provide a reference for the implementation and management of ecological projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seaweed aquaculture is vital in protecting the marine eco-environment and mitigating climate change. China generates more than half of the world's total seaweed production. However, despite multiple local studies, accurate and reliable information on broad-scale seaweed farms is still scarce. Using an object-based method to classify 3 m spatial resolution Planet Scope images along offshore China, a total of 129,494 ha of cultured seaweed was identified and delineated with an overall accuracy of 95.70% and a KAPPA index of 0.912, respectively. Then, a seaweed map in offshore China in 2018–2019 was developed. The results provided basic information about seaweed farms in China. The approach reported in this work is accurate and efficient, which can be used to replace the conventional method to obtain the culture seaweed information. This study can be of reference for mapping seaweed on a broader or global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent voluntary climate change reporting (VCCR) initiatives, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Chinese companies continue to lag behind their global counterparts. This research contributes to the existing literature examining the effects of CEO background (specifically academic, foreign and political background) on corporate decisions to engage in VCCR. The data sample consists of Chinese listed companies that participated in CDP surveys during 2010–2017 (1041 final firm-year observations). The study's descriptive findings reveal that most Chinese companies are reluctant to report their climate change information to the CDP as only 12% of Chinese companies participated in the CDP annual survey during the study period. However, using a logistic regression model, we find that CEOs with academic experience, foreign exposure and political connections positively affect firms' decisions to engage in VCCR. The results remain robust when we use the propensity score matching technique to account for sample selection problems. Overall, the results are interpreted within the theoretical insights of the upper echelons perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]