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Virtual humans have become a hot research topic in recent years due to the development of AI technology and computer graphics. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of the interaction design of 3D virtual humans. We first categorize the interac- tion design of virtual humans into speech, eye, facial expressions, and posture interactions. Then we describe the combination of different modalities of virtual humans in the multimodal interaction design section. We also summarize the applications of intelli- gent virtual humans in the fields of education, healthcare, and work assistance. The final part of the paper discusses the remaining challenges and opportunities in virtual human interaction design, along with future directions in this field. This paper hopes to help researchers quickly understand the characteristics of various modal interactions in the process of designing intelligent virtual humans and provide design guidance and suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2008.09.004 Byline: Shixiong Cao (a), Xiuqing Wang (b), Guosheng Wang (c) Keywords: Poverty trap; Rural-urban gap; Poverty; China Abstract: Most economists and policy-makers would now agree that economic growth - in the sense of rising per capita incomes or expenditures - reduces poverty in the developing world. However, it is also true that per capita data does not adequately account for individuals who have fallen into the poverty trap, as in China: a widening gap is developing between the rich and the poor due to a disparity in income and employment opportunities, among other factors, between rural and urban residents, and this gap is not reflected in mean (per capita) parameters. The present paper illustrates how the situation in China during the current period of reform should not be forgotten when other developing countries consider the pros and cons of China's rapid development. Author Affiliation: (a) College of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China (b) College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100094, China (c) College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agriculture University, No. 2 Yuan Ming Yuan West Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China Article History: Received 1 June 2008; Revised 15 July 2008; Accepted 3 September 2008

Abstract Urbanization and socioeconomic development require huge investments. However, the history of developed countries suggests that an inefficient tax and financial system cannot meet this demand for investment. Historically, this has forced some countries to expand outward to secure the necessary resources, and this has caused great harm through colonialism and warfare. Therefore, finding a peaceful road to achieve urbanization and socioeconomic development is a crucial issue facing human society, particularly in developing nations. To provide insights, we examined China's land transfer model, which has made huge amounts of money available to support the infrastructure construction that accompanies urbanization and socioeconomic development. However, this approach also creates a serious risk of a financial and debt crisis that can jeopardize social stability and undermine future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net ecosystem services value provides superior support for land use policy. • The net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services. Abstract Environmental protection can maintain ecosystem health, improve the provision of ecosystem services, and increase human welfare. However, traditional calculations of the value of ecosystem services (VES) exclude their cost, thereby undermining plans to achieve a combination of environmental protection with sustainable socioeconomic development. To understand the difference between VES and the net value after accounting for costs (NES), we evaluated the evolution of the main ecosystem services in China. When costs are accounted for (i.e., when they are subtracted from VES), NES averaged 10.0 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1 for China as a whole (35.1% of VES), with values of 39.0 × 103, −0.7 × 103, 27.7 × 103, and 13.0 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1 for wetland, grassland, farmland, and forest ecosystems, respectively. These values represent decreases of 36.4, 114.9, 52.7, and 70.6% from the corresponding VES values. To achieve sustainable development and ecological restoration, China's government must base decisions on NES, not VES, to ensure that they account for the associated costs. Applying the present results in China and elsewhere in the world should increase the net benefits of ecological restoration while still permitting socioeconomic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services. • The net ecosystem services value provides decision-making for ecological conservation and environmental protection. Abstract To understand the difference between the value and the net value of ecosystem services (VES and NES , respectively), we used government statistics and data from published papers about the values and costs of grassland services to calculate their VES and NES in China. We found that when the associated costs (investment in ecological conservation and restoration, reduction of the risk of natural disasters, water consumption, and land rent) are subtracted from this total, the NES of China's grassland ecosystem services equaled −0.12 × 103 RMB ha−1 yr−1. Except for northeastern China and Inner Mongolia, which have abundant natural resources and lower population and livestock pressure, China's other seven regions had a negative grassland NES. The pressure on grassland by livestock has increased steeply (by 1066.1%), from 29.2 × 106 sheep units in 1977 to 340.5 × 106 sheep units in 2014. This strongly suggests that China's grasslands are being heavily overexploited. In contrast with China's well-funded afforestation programs, the low investments in grassland restoration and management have combined to produce severe degradation of grasslands. China's government should re-examine the benefits of livestock culture by accounting for the costs of this land use and of various restoration methods, and should take measures to preserve and restore the country's fragile grasslands. Our results provide a warning for managers of other ecosystems around the world where calculations of grassland VES may be ignoring significant costs of ecological restoration and preservation, leading to overuse and degradation of the ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem degradation is caused by interactions among multiple factors, including climate change and human activity. Therefore, we must understand the key factors that underlie ecological degradation and determine their impacts on ecosystem change before we can undertake ecological restoration. To test this hypothesis, we proposed a measure that we call “targeted measures to control ecological restoration”. This approach calculates the contribution of every key factor and control measure to ecosystem change during ecological restoration; by identifying the key factors, it helps managers to design an effective restoration strategy based on those factors. To test this approach, we performed a case study from 2000 to 2016 in four towns of Changting County, Fujian Province, China. Although the vegetation cover decreased by 3.1% from 1984 to 1999, vegetation cover and vegetation species richness increased by 94.8 and 616.7%, respectively, in the test areas where new measures were implemented from 2000 to 2016. These rates were 4.5 and 148.2 times those in the control area, respectively. Our new approach focuses on repairing degraded ecosystems rather than creating new ones. The case study suggests that understanding ecosystem dynamics can help us deal more effectively with the simultaneous effects of climate change and human activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding causes huge economic losses, yet the flood water is an important resource, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Because rivers flood annually, most flooding research has focused on river management. Researchers have largely ignored the resource potential of flash floods, as they are less predictable. Here, we describe an innovative project in which disaster management planners in a dryland community in northwestern China treated flash floods as a resource rather than as a threat, and helped the community to benefit from this resource. The project produced ecological benefits (combating desertification), social benefits (flood control), and economic benefits (harvesting water for future use) that improved the community’s adaptive capacity and facilitated sustainable development. This example should inspire risk managers to seek ways to transform natural disasters into resources, thereby improving hazard management and promoting community survival and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental Kuznets curve theory predicts that rapid economic development will initially and unavoidably create environmental problems until these problems are solved at higher development levels. However, because different economies face different impacts from economic growth, some may find ways to shorten the environmental Kuznets curve. To understand the characteristics of a “Kuznets curve” based on Chinese environmental attitudes and the factors that influence these attitudes, we interviewed 3000 randomly selected Chinese adults in 2014 using stratified random sampling in six areas (four provinces and two provincial-scale municipalities) that had been affected by the national Grain for Green program. Our goal was to determine their opinions on China’s environmental policy. Based on their responses, we calculated that the minimum value of the environmental Kuznets curve (the income at which priorities change from income to environmental protection) occurred at a per capita income of between 20 200 and 27,000 RMB (an increase of 61.6% compared with results from a similar survey in 2004). We found significant impacts of income, education level, age, gender, employment, and region on Chinese environmental choices. To achieve sustainable socioeconomic development, China’s government must account for how these factors affect public responses to its policy initiatives. China’s government must also find ways to increase personal income faster to speed China’s progress along the environmental Kuznets curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than attempting to balance the environment with the economy (i.e., a zero-sum game), a theoretically better long-term approach would be to achieve harmonious development in which both the environment and the economy benefit. To provide insights into this suggestion, we analyzed the relationships between environmental quality and economic development in China through a threshold regression model based on panel data from 292 cities from 2007 to 2018. We found that the relationship between environmental quality and economic development represented a negative interaction before or after the relationship passed through a zone of temporary balance, but that attaining a high urbanization level (in this case study, 81.0%) could improve the efficiency and capital utilization rate of environmental governance and change the impact from negative to positive, thereby achieving harmonious development rather than a zero-sum game. The government should therefore take measures to increase urbanization so as to achieve more harmonious development of the environment and economy (i.e., a win–win situation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimation of ecosystem service values is a hot area of research in ecological conservation and economics. However, the costs of these outputs are largely unknown. In this paper, we estimated the opportunity cost of water allocated to afforestation projects through mathematical modeling based on statistical data for all of China to provide support for restoration planning based on a fuller consideration of the true costs. To guide future ecological conservation and environmental policy development, we illustrate a neglected concept (ecosystem service costs) and use this concept to compare the ecological services provided by ecological restoration based on afforestation with those of restoration based on the conservation of natural vegetation using data obtained since 1949 in China. The results showed that afforestation and natural vegetation create annual costs related to use of the available water resources equal to 4800 and 3700 RMB ha −1 , respectively, representing a water opportunity cost of 1100 RMB ha −1 for afforestation. This illustrates the rule that “there is no free lunch” for any service, including ecosystem services. Therefore, to support the development of more effective and sustainable environmental restoration policy, it will be necessary to evaluate the associated opportunity costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rapid economic and population growth, water scarcities and conflicts over the available water are becoming worse, while climate change makes the potential risk to society unpredictable. To deal with growing water scarcity and improve the quality of water, China's government launched a large-scale afforestation program in the Tibetan Plateau—the birthplace of Asia's primary rivers, which lies upstream of 40% of the world's population, at a high altitude and with fragile ecosystems. However, this program could aggravate the conflict for water between humans and nature, because tree plantations consume 1.7 × 10 9 m 3 more water annually than the equivalent area of the region's natural vegetation. The shrinkage of glaciers caused by climate warming will exacerbate the water resource scarcity caused by these plantations and may soon become a primary source of conflict between regions that depend on river discharge from the plateau. To mitigate these problems, China's government should change its policy to conserve natural vegetation instead of planting more trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global environmental problems have significant natural and socioeconomic consequences. However, the consequences are often evaluated independently by ecologists and social scientists. In an effort to integrate the consequences of the two types of problem during ecological restoration and thereby improve future development of environmental policy, we used regression analysis and remote sensing to calculate the relative contributions of human activities, climate change, and socioeconomic development to land use and cover change during China’s huge investments in ecological restoration since the 1980s. We performed this analysis both for China as a whole, and for eight regions with distinctive ecological and social characteristics. We found that China’s fast socioeconomic development and decreasing rural population were dominant factors in ecological restoration, whereas direct human intervention was a paradoxical factor that did not always lead to recovery. However, the changes in vegetation cover and the dominant causal factors differed among the regions of China as a result of differences in local conditions. Because of the complexity of ecosystem restoration, a region-specific strategy based on integrating ecological and socioeconomic factors should be developed. In particular, we urge caution when considering single, monolithic approaches (such as the afforestation that is currently the main approach) because these approaches ignore the local limits imposed by ecological factors such as climate and soils and human factors such as socioeconomic characteristics; such approaches can be dangerous if they neglect key social or natural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A country's natural and cultural heritage is created in a unique environment, and for this heritage to survive, it must be preserved in a similar environment. In China, 60 years of afforestation to combat desertification near the Mogao Grottoes and the Crescent Moon Spring have shown that attempts to protect the regional environment have not protected these heritage sites, and may actually have endangered them. Conserving the environment's original state may be the most effective solution for heritage conservation where sites have survived under a specific set of physical and environmental conditions for hundreds or thousands of years and may not be able to survive a new environment. Man-made changes should only be attempted with great care to avoid damaging the conditions that have preserved the natural or cultural heritage in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] China's unbalanced development strategy seems likely to lead to unsustainable socioeconomic development. [•] Urban development strategy should focus on small and medium cities. [•] Governments must share the benefits of China's economic growth more equally among regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• China's approach provides a model that can be emulated by other countries to promote the development. • China's recent economic approach has been based on a new concept of shared property. • Shared property means that workers share ownership of an enterprise while returned when they no longer work for the enterprise. Just as new branches grow from old trees, human civilization develops by building on previous institutions. Currently, there is much debate over what institutions will emerge from and possibly replace capitalism. In this paper, We describe a new ownership model that we call shared property. In contrast with the private ownership that characterizes capitalism and the public ownership that characterizes socialism, the new shared property concept means that those who participate in driving an enterprise's success are comparable to co-owners of that enterprise, and benefit from its success. However, when these employees leave the company, their share of the ownership is returned to the enterprise and awarded to a future employee. Because the new property rights system can maximize employee enthusiasm, it provides a new engine that will drive future socioeconomic growth and lead to a significant institutional change that combines the advantages of capitalism and socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Land degradation and poverty are problems that must be tackled together for environmental conservation to succeed. However, it is rarely possible to move a population from degraded land to another area where the people can be more easily sustained. To find a new strategy that achieves both conservation and economic gains without the need to relocate a population, we examined/investigated a sustainable combination of ecological and economic development suitable for the restoration of areas of China with collapsing gullies, where the frequent steep slopes make restoration difficult. The results showed that the degraded land may contain significant benefits that were previously unappreciated, thereby transforming a problem into an opportunity. Our results suggest that the new approach can both improve the livelihoods of local citizens and promote environmental conservation, leading to successful ecological restoration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Road construction is an important cause of environmental degradation, particularly in mountainous regions. However, re-establishing vegetation cover at the construction site can mitigate these problems, particularly on steep roadside slopes. In the present study, we developed two new planting techniques to increase vegetation cover on these slopes, in which planters fill the holes in air bricks (i.e., bricks with large holes that pass through the full depth of the brick) with soil, then plant grass or herbaceous species in the soil. Two variants of this technique (one in which the air bricks form a stairstep pattern, and another in which they form a smooth slope) were tested in an area with a warm climate near Shennongjia (Hubei Province) between 2006 and 2008. The new planting techniques promoted root growth, the development of a continuous vegetation cover, and the production of merchantable seeds compared with the conventional planting technique. This suggests that the air brick technique is more suitable for the study area, where the natural soils are thin, and may prove suitable for similar areas elsewhere in the world. The provisional results, based on 2 years of research, suggest that the new techniques represent a potentially valuable alternative for vegetation restoration, landscape conservation, and road maintenance/management in mountainous zones during and after highway construction. The techniques have strong potential for use in other areas. In addition, they provide a good example of using ecological engineering to increase vegetation cover on steep roadside slopes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Historical statistics suggest that China''s “one child” family-planning policy is exacerbating the risk of extinction for smaller ethnic groups. To mitigate the adverse consequences of this policy, the Chinese government must begin working now to understand and account for these risks and to offer a pragmatic policy for these groups based on sustainable birth rates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: To restore China''s degraded environment, the government launched an environmental restoration project named the “Grain for Green” Project (GGP) in 1999. From 1999 to 2010, the government will spend US$ 40 billion to convert 147 million ha of farmland into forest and grassland and 173 million ha of wasteland (including abandoned farmland) into forest in 25 provinces. A primary focus is to replace farming and livestock grazing in fragile areas with reforestation and planting of forage crops. Given the project''s tremendous size and number of participants, the attitudes of the affected farmers will strongly influence the GGP''s success. To learn their attitudes, we surveyed 2000 farmers in 2005 to quantify their opinions of the GGP and how it has affected their livelihoods, and we discuss the concerns raised by these attitudes. Farmers appreciated the grain and financial compensation offered by the GGP, but few considered planting of trees (8.9%) or forage species (2.2%) to be a priority. Although only 19.1% felt that their livelihoods had been adversely affected by the GGP and 63.8% supported the project, a large proportion (37.2%) planned to return to cultivating forested areas and grassland once the project''s subsidies end in 2018. Therefore, much of the restored vegetation risks being converted into farmland and rangeland again, compromising the sustainability of the environmental achievements. To succeed, strategies such as the GGP must compensate farmers fairly for their costs, create new agricultural products and techniques for use on more suitable land, and create job and training programs that account for the needs and desires of farmers and give them alternatives to returning to old land-use practices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There are many factors have contributed to China''s environmental crisis and are hindering environmental recovery campaigns. In particular, the implementation of government policy has played a strong role, both because of a government''s natural slowness to change and because of structural impediments. Competition for a share of the huge investments that are being made to support environmental protection among various governmental departments and with local governments has also slowed progress. The conflicting socioeconomic policies that can result from this competition have undermined the large investments in environmental programs by failing to consider the environmental consequences of the conflicts, leading to inappropriate actions and compromising the ability to achieve environmental restoration goals. To improve governance and the ability to meet environmental goals, governments at all levels must understand the problem created by the competition that leads to weak coordination of efforts and must formulate revised policies that encourage sustainability by balancing economic growth with a careful consideration of the need for all groups, whether governmental or private sector, to benefit from these policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Cost-benefit can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net benefit provides stronger support for decision-making for ecological conservation. • The net benefit is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services. Land degradation, soil erosion by water, and desertification caused by deforestation are serious problems around the world. To counteract the effects of these problems, China's government implemented the world's largest and most comprehensive ecological restoration program: the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP). However, it's not yet known how well the program has succeeded because no one has performed a comprehensive cost–benefit analysis. To provide the missing information, we developed an improved cost–benefit analysis approach that accounts for as many benefits and costs (including opportunity costs) as possible given the current availability of data. Our analysis revealed a net benefit of 6.029×1012 RMB per year for the NFCP. The net benefit (after subtracting the costs) was highest for protection of natural vegetation to allow recovery, but was lowest for afforestation by planting. We found significant differences between regions of China, suggesting that governments of these regions should adjust the balance among their ecological restoration measures to account for unique local conditions and maximize the net benefit. In addition, governments should increase subsidies to the residents of program areas to compensate them for the costs imposed on them by the NFCP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Real estate has contributed huge sums of money to support China's urbanization. • Four cities used different real estate market models to accelerate urbanization. • Real estate fees supported urban infrastructure construction. Urbanization is an important engine of modernization and economic growth, and appears to be an inevitable trend in human socioeconomic development around the world. However, China's unusually rapid urbanization rate has attracted increasing attention. Our research suggests that understanding the country's real estate market is the key to understanding the country's rapid urbanization. The booming real estate market represents a major source of funding for urban infrastructure construction, and has accelerated the migration of rural residents to cities. We describe how four typical Chinese cities supported urbanization by promoting the development of different aspects of a real estate market to illustrate real estate's role in Chinese urbanization, thereby providing examples and cautions for urbanization both in China and in other parts of the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale afforestation is a primary tool for combatting desertification and global warming. However, the consequences for future ecosystems are complex and poorly understood. To judge the payback from afforestation in arid regions, we assessed the effects of the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, which is the world's largest ecological restoration program, in predominantly semi-arid to arid regions in China. Our analysis revealed a net loss of 230.8 × 109 RMB annually for afforestation, suggesting that tree planting is a poor choice in much of northern China. However, establishment of fruit tree plantations and protecting vegetation to allow natural recovery produced large annual benefits (235.5 × 109 RMB and 447.43 × 109 RMB, respectively) due to having the highest product value and lowest restoration cost, respectively. Because the net benefits were negative for artificial afforestation, and some net benefits were negative for some restoration programs in some regions, it is essential to change the proportions of the different restoration methods both to improve the restoration success and ensure the survival of the residents in areas affected by the program. • Our more comprehensive form of cost–benefit analysis reveals net benefits. • We applied the method to China's Three North Shelter Forest Program. • Forest protection to allow natural recovery gave high net benefits due to low cost. • Fruit tree plantations provided high net benefits due to income from fruit sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests generate a wide range of ecosystem services that support human well-being and socioeconomic development. However, traditional calculations of the value of these services generally failed to account for their costs. To understand the difference between the value (VES) and the net value (NES) of forest ecosystem services, we used government statistics and data from published papers about the values and costs of these services to calculate the NES of China's forest ecosystems. After accounting for the opportunity costs (water consumption and land rent), the investments in conservation and restoration of forests, and the cost of management to prevent natural disasters, China's forest NES averaged 13.3 × 103 RMB ha−1 year−1, which is only 30.1% of the average VES of 44.2 × 103 RMB ha−1 year−1 calculated using the traditional approach. We also found NES was negative in parts of eastern China because of the region's excessive investments in forests. Accounting for the costs to determine the true (net) value of ecosystem services suggests that this region should reconsider the size and nature of its investments to optimize its land use. Our findings provide a reference for the management of other ecosystems in the world where VES calculations may ignore significant costs of ecological restoration and conservation, resulting in inappropriate investments in ecosystems and improper planning of land use. The methods we describe can help restoration managers identify and solve these problems. • The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net value provides stronger support for decision-making for ecological conservation. • The net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Fruit trees are an important forest resource because they simultaneously produce huge ecological and economic benefits. • The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net value provides stronger support for decision-making for ecological conservation. Fruit trees are an important forest resource because they simultaneously produce huge ecological and economic benefits. However, many estimates of these benefits have neglected the costs of providing these services, leading to ineffective planting of these trees and, consequently, reduced economic and ecological benefits. To understand the difference between the total and net benefits of ecosystem services, we used government statistics and data from published papers to calculate the total benefits, costs, and net benefits (= total benefits – costs) of land use of fruit trees in China. The fruit trees had a high value of ecosystem services (VES), at 643.2×109 RMB·yr−1, and a high value of products (VP), at 1399.4×109 RMB·yr−1 in 2014, and the total benefits (VES plus VP) of land use of fruit trees totaled 2042.6×109 RMB·yr−1. After accounting for the costs of establishing, maintaining, and protecting the fruit trees, as well as the opportunity costs of not using the land for other purposes, the net benefits provided by the fruit trees were 955.7×109 RMB·yr−1 (53.2% less than the total benefits). Due to regional differences in the geographic and economic environments, the benefits and costs of the fruit trees differed among China's regions, leading to large differences in the net benefits from the fruit trees. Because fruit tree cultivation is essential to farmer livelihoods, the government must plan the establishment and management of the fruit trees based on the results of cost–benefit analysis to achieve the win-win goal of combining ecological restoration with poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's goal is to develop some of the top universities in the world, but there is still a big gap in university quality compared with developed countries. The current command and control system used by the national government limits university autonomy and has created many problems, including a lack of scientific innovation, a widening poverty gap in terms of access to higher education, and a mismatch between supply and demand in the labor market. To solve these problems, China's higher education system must change to permit more autonomy and a stronger focus on the job market; to pay university professors a fair wage; to provide more freedom to the administration of universities and research institutes; and to promote participation by professors in the administration of schools. It will also be important to place less emphasis on awards and titles, and focus instead on letting the best research speak for itself. • Chinese university education is still guided primarily by the government. • This command and control system has limited the development of university education. • Universities should compete in the market, guided by government control. • Students should be encouraged to become more innovative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is undergoing rapid urbanization accompanied by rapid urban development and migration of rural populations to the cities. Because local governments are selling land to compensate for an unbalanced tax system that provides them with insufficient budgets, urban expansion is booming around the country. However, this form of land finance has grown out of control, in some cases producing uninhabited “ghost towns”, without any feedback from institutions that would limit the problem. Simultaneously, social problems have arisen from a failure to compensate the land's former residents for loss of their land and future livelihood, thereby jeopardizing China's social stability. This under-recognized contradiction created by urbanization is endangering China's environment and its socioeconomic development, and will endanger other developing countries seeking to emulate China's urbanization model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Roads are a prominent feature of many landscapes, and high road densities create correspondingly high ecological impacts by altering landscape patterns, interrupting ecological flows, increasing erosion, fragmenting habitat, and facilitating the spread of invasive species. Here, we describe the construction of “near-natural greenways” that produce environmentally and socially harmonious road systems that meet the needs of both the environment and the socioeconomic development in China and that satisfy environmental, ecological, educational, traffic safety, economic, and sustainable developmental goals. In the last decade, China has embarked upon the implementation of a network of near-natural greenways with the vision of linking economic development with nature conservation by means of improved rehabilitation of existing road systems and improved construction of new roads. Ecological science, and especially landscape ecology, will play an important role in the planning and implementation of future near-natural greenways in China and around the world. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Grain for Green Program (GGP) that the Chinese government has implemented, the world's largest ecological restoration plan, has an important component based on payments for ecosystem services. However, the program's net benefits (which include compentation payments) remain unclear. To solve this problem, we proposed an improved cost–benefit analysis method that reveals the specific relationship between the benefits of each type of restoration and the multiple costs that must be incurred to generate those benefits. The results showed that the benefits and net benefits of GGP were 1749.2 × 109 RMB and 637.2 × 109 RMB, respectively in 2017. These were equivalent to total and net benefits that averaged 60.17 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1 and 21.92 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1, respectively, across the four methods. Afforestation of degraded land had the biggest total cost (509.1 × 109 RMB·yr−1), whereas establishing fruit tree plantations produced the highest net benefit (244.2 × 109 RMB·yr−1), but the best cost–benefit ratio was obtained by natural forest conservation (366.8%). To improve the net benefits of GGP while balancing the relationship between environmental protection and economic development, the GGP must be adapted so that managers plan program implementation based on net benefits; to do so, planners should choose the method for each site that maximizes the program's benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Land degradation results from the interactions among multiple climate and human factors. Solving the problem requires a holistic strategy that deals with all significant factors simultaneously. However, it is difficult to solve such problems because few researchers have studied the simultaneous effects of these interactions, making it difficult to develop a truly holistic strategy. To help land managers find such a strategy, we have proposed and tested a new approach for ecological restoration in which we calculated the simultaneous contributions of multiple factors during vegetation cover change in Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province, China, from 2000 to 2016. After implementing the new approach, the vegetation cover increased by 35.7% during the study period, which is 2.3 times the rate in the rest of Shaanxi Province, where only the national Grain for Green program was implemented. The new approach accounted for 74.0% of the increased vegetation cover in the first year, and comparable values in the second and third years. Our results provide important information to guide sustainable development in China, and our approach can be adapted for use in other nations that are facing similar problems. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Ecological restoration must account for climate and human factors simultaneously. • Restoration through socioeconomic development will be sustainable in the long term. • Alleviating poverty significantly improves the effects of ecological restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity is a global environmental problem that jeopardizes human safety and socioeconomic development. Since 1952, China has implemented a large-scale tree-planting program in the country's arid regions to combat desertification. However, there is a serious risk this program will exacerbate water shortages and lower the groundwater table: the trees selected for this program were not chosen based on local environmental constraints, and their evapotranspiration exceeds the regional precipitation. However, no data on the afforestation's effects on the groundwater table is available. This is problematic because any loss of groundwater will severely constrain socioeconomic development in China's arid and semiarid regions, which already face severe water shortages. The economic concept of a groundwater opportunity cost could be used to guide socioeconomic activities to improve the sustainability of groundwater use and mitigate the potential problems caused by the Chinese afforestation program. In this paper, seven evapotranspiration models were used to provide the first estimate of the opportunity cost created by afforestation's adverse effects on the groundwater resource. The results showed that the groundwater table declined yearly throughout the study area, with mean water opportunity costs in 2011 ranging from 0.04 × 10 9 RMB to 11.1 × 10 9 RMB under nine provinces in arid and semiarid China. This study provides the first solid evidence that afforestation in arid and semiarid northern China will exacerbate the groundwater decline while creating enormous opportunity costs. Thus, the afforestation program must be urgently reassessed and the water-use efficiency of vegetation must be considered when planning future ecological restoration both to make the restoration more cost-effective and to protect the ecosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological services were initially used to quantify the benefits used in valuation of environmental protection, as they helped stakeholders to understand the benefits that ecosystems bring to people. As a result, they increased support for ecological engineering, including ecosystem restoration. However, by failing to account for costs, and particularly for indirect costs such as the tradeoffs among ecosystem services under different land uses, the analyses were incomplete and often provided poor support for policy development and land management to promote environmental conservation. In this paper, we provide a framework for assessing the net value of the benefits provided by ecosystem services (i.e., the benefit that remains after subtracting key costs), taking the Beijing Plains afforestation project as an example. Furthermore, we analyzed the importance of scale effects and marginal changes in ecosystem services assessment, and highlighted the uncertainty of evaluation results caused by basing some of the analysis on market prices, which can change unpredictably. To better support conservation activities and maximize the ecological benefits obtained from an environmental strategy, it’s necessary to obtain accurate estimates of the net value of ecosystem services by accounting for an increasing range of direct and indirect costs, calculated at the same scale as the project implementation and accounting for marginal changes, thereby providing better support for policy development and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safeguarding food security is one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. When food production reaches its technological peak, a shortage of arable land will be the key factor that limits food production. Thus, how to increase the area of arable land without ecological damage is a problem faced by the whole world. China is the world's most populous country and a traditional agricultural country. Under the pressure of rapid socioeconomic development, China has taken measures to protect its cultivated land from environmental degradation and protect its food security. By reviewing the research literature, we found several ways to increase the area of arable land while protecting this land from damage. We found that natural resources such as marginal and degraded lands could potentially be converted into arable land while still protecting the ecological environment. However, implementation of such a strategy must account for each region's unique ecological and socioeconomic conditions, and will require both support from appropriate policies and ongoing monitoring and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "resource curse", in which abundant natural riches tend to frustrate rather than promote economic growth, has been widely accepted by scholars since the 1990s. However, explanations of this phenomenon have not been compelling because developing and developed countries with rich resources coexist. To provide insights into this curse, we calculated the total amount of three different categories of resources for 31 Chinese provinces, and analyzed the relationship between the abundance of these resources and the provincial economic level. The results showed large variations in per capita abundance of resources for a given level of per capita income, suggesting that abundance alone could not explain economic development. The total and net resource abundance per unit area were significantly positively related to per capita income, but the relationship was not significant for these variables based on the per capita abundance. However, we found that the per capita income was significantly correlated with nine economic and social factors: per capita foreign trade, domestic trade, investment, and finances; the transportation infrastructure; and the proportions of employment, college graduates, non-governmental employment, and urbanization. This suggests that the abundance of natural resources is not the primary factor responsible for differences in economic development among the regions and that there is no overall resource curse in China. Instead, implementing appropriate economic policy and maintaining social stability appear to be the primary drivers of social and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]