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Ice and snow tourism in China has grown significantly since the country successfully hosted the Beijing Winter Olympics. Climatic conditions profoundly impact the development of ice and snow tourism; however, most studies have focused on constructing different climate suitability indicators for ice and snow tourism to evaluate individual regions, lacking horizontal comparative studies across multiple regions. This study aims to enrich the connotation of climate suitability for ice and snow sports, establish an evaluation model based on snowfall amount, temperature, and wind speed, and use daily meteorological data from 1991 to 2021 to horizontally compare the climate suitability for ice and snow sports in major ski tourism destinations in China. This study boasts four major findings: 1) the average ice and snow sports climate index of each region decreases over time, and the overall suitability of the climate for ice and snow sports is reducing; 2) northern Xinjiang exhibits the most evident regional differentiation from 'very suitable' to 'generally suitable'; 3) the spatial zoning of climate suitability for ice and snow sports exhibits heterogeneity, as northern Xinjiang is divided into two 'suitable and above' zones with rotating empirical orthogonal function (REOF). Correspondingly, the four provinces of Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning are divided into three 'generally suitable and above' zones; 4) snowfall amount is the main factor affecting the climate suitability of ice and snow sports in the major ski tourist destinations in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fine roots (< 2 mm in diameter) play an important role in belowground ecosystem processes, and their physiological ecology is easily altered by nitrogen deposition. To better understand the response of physiological and ecological processes of fine roots to nitrogen deposition, a manipulation experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of exogenous nitrogen addition (control (0 kg ha−1 a−1), low (5 kg ha−1 a−1), moderate (10 kg ha−1 a−1), and high nitrogen (20 kg ha−1 a−1)) on the biomass, morphological characteristics, chemical elements and nonstructural carbohydrates of fine roots in a Picea schrenkiana forest. We found that most fine roots were located in the 0–20 cm of soil layer across all nitrogen treatment groups (42.81–52.09% of the total biomass). Compared with the control, the biomass, specific root length and specific root area of the fine roots increased in the medium nitrogen treatment, whereas the fine roots biomass was lower in the high nitrogen treatment than in the other treatments. In fine roots, nitrogen addition promotes the absorption of nitrogen and phosphorus and their stoichiometric ratio, while reducing the content of nonstructural carbohydrates. The content of nonstructural carbohydrates in the small-diameter roots (< 1 mm in diamter) in each nitrogen treatment group was lower than that in the large-diameter roots. Correlation analysis showed that soil carbon and nitrogen were positively correlated with fine root biomass and specific root length and negatively correlated with the nonstructural carbohydrates. Our findings demonstrate that medium nitrogen addition is conducive to the development of fine root morphology, while excessive nitrogen can suppress the growth of root systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]