Damage and recovery of the Gurbantunggut Desert vegetation following engineering activities

The fragile ecological environment of the Gurbantunggut Desert is damaged/disturbed by human activities relating to the development of oil-gas resources and the constructions of desert road and great engineering in the Jungger Basin. It was mainly represented: soil compaction, vegetation cleaning, burial of vegetation, oil polluting, and soil disturbance. With investigation and experiment, we found that when the way and intensity of engineering activities disturbing the eco-environment does not make its ecological stability disintegrated, the desert vegetation has a capacity of natural recovery. To speed and strengthen the process of vegetation recovery efficient assistant measurements, including stabilizing mobile sands promptly and sowing seeds of shrub and herb plants in good time will be needed.     

Expansion and contraction of Chinese deserts during the Quaternary

Episodic dune formations during the Quaternary are found in many deserts of China. The causes of desert expansions on different time scales are not the same. Desert extension at about 1.1 and 0.9 Ma ago were the response to the active tectonic movements, whereas the desert evolutions on the ten-thousand years time scale were the response to the orbital scale climatic changes. Spatial scale studies on desert evolution indicate that desert margins shifted greatly during the last glacial maximum (LGM) and the Holocene optimum, its changing from 125°E of the LGM to 105°E of the climatic optimum. Historical desertification in the semiarid China is not a response to climate drought but largely associated with the human impacts (mainly over-cultivation) since about 2300 years ago, which leads to the reworking of the underlying LGM sands.     

Utilization of water resources,ecological balance and land desertification in the Tarim Basin,Xinjiang

Because of the human exploitation and utilization of water resources in the Tarim Basin, the water resources consumption has changed from mainly natural ecosystem to artificial oasis ecosystem, and the environment has changed correspondingly. The basic changes are: desertification and oasis development coexist, both “the human being advance and the desert retreat” and “the desert advance and the human being retreat” coexist, but the latter is dominant. In the upper reaches, water volume drawing to irrigated agricultural areas has increased, artificial oases have been enlarging and moving from the deltas in the lower reaches of many rivers to the piedmont plains. In the middle and lower reaches of the Tarim River, the stream flow has decreased, old oases have declined, natural vegetations have been degenerating, desertification has been enlarging, and the environment has deteriorated. The transition regions, which consist of forestlands, grasslands and waters between the desert and the oases, have been decreasing continuously, their shelter function to the oases has been weakened, and the desert is threatening the oases seriously.     

Getting ‘holistic’ about land rehabilitation in hot arid regions

The paper describes Western Australian examples and causes of land degradation. It outlines shortcomings in the methodologies used to rehabilitate these areas. From this a protocol is suggested for an ‘holistic’ approach to land rehabilitation.     

Study of the Earth’s free core nutation by tidal gravity data recorded with international superconducting gravimeters

By stacking high-precision tidal gravity observations obtained with superconducting gravimeters at six stations in China, Japan, Belgium, France, Germany and Finland, the local systematical discrepancies in the parameter fitting, caused by atmospheric, oceanic tidal loading and the other local environmental perturbations, are eliminated effectively. As a result, the resonance parameters of the Earth’s free core nutation are accurately determined. In this study, the eigenperiod of free core nutation is given as 429.0 sidereal days, which is in agreement with those published in the previous studies. It is about 30 sidereal days less than those calculated in theoretical models (about 460 sidereal days), which confirms the real ellipticity of the fluid core of the Earth to be about 5% larger than the one expected in assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium. The quality factor (Q value) of free core nutation is given as about 9543, which, compared with those determined before based on the body tide observations, is much larger, but more close to those obtained using the VLBI observations. The complex resonance strength is also determined as (−6.10×10⁻⁴, −0.01 ×10⁻⁴)°/h, which can principally describe the deformation characteristics of an anelastic mantle.     

Natural hydraulic cracking: numerical model and sensitivity study

Natural hydrofracturing caused by overpressure plays an important role in geopressure evolution and hydrocarbon migration in petroliferous basins. Its mechanism is quite well understood in the case of artificial hydraulic fracturing triggered by high-pressure fluid injection in a well. This is not so for natural hydraulic fracturing which is assumed to initiate as micro-cracks with large influence on the permeability of the medium. The mechanism of natural hydraulic cracking, triggered by increasing pore pressure during geological periods, is studied using a fracturing model coupled to the physical processes occurring during basin evolution. In this model, the hydraulic cracking threshold is assumed to lie between the classical failure limit and the beginning of dilatancy. Fluid pressure evolution is calculated iteratively in order to allow dynamic adjustment of permeability so that the fracturing limit is always preserved. The increase of permeability is interpreted on the basis of equivalent fractures. It is found that fracturing is very efficient to keep a stress level at the rock’s hydraulic cracking limit: a fracture permeability one order of magnitude larger than the intrinsic permeability of the rock would be enough. Observations reported from actual basins and model results strongly suggest that natural hydraulic cracking occurs continuously to keep the pressure at the fracturing limit under relaxed stress conditions.     

社会主义市场经济条件下的土地储备及其模式选择

社会主义市场经济建设的逐步完善，要求我们必须改变传统的土地管理思路，土地储备作为政府经营城市的一种重要手段，能够使政府在土地管理的实践中实现资源与资产并重的目标。在阐述土地储备的涵义、起源及其在我国的产生与发展的基础上，分析了土地储备的运行机制与最终目标，归纳了我国土地储备的基本做法，首次提出了城市土地储备的直接储备模式和间接土地储备模式概念，并提出了地方政府构建城市土地储备模式的基本原则和具体操作思路。     

GIS与土壤溶质运移模型结合研究进展

地理信息系统对土壤溶质模型研究而言，使用者的要求与GIS所能提供的功能之间，还存在巨大的差距。出于对环境问题的关注，土壤中水分及溶质运移的规律及其对环境的影响，成为当前研究的热点。随着对土壤溶质运移模型研究的深入，一方面由于田间土壤特性具有很大的空间变异；另一方面，在实际应用中，往往溶质运移的宏观特征而非微观特征，具有更重要的意义。将溶质运移模型与GIS技术结合，定量研究空间尺度的溶质运移，成为溶质运移研究的必然发展趋势。由于计算机软硬件技术的发展，GIS正处于一个高速发展的时期。将GIS与溶质运移模型相结合，或者进一步，以GIS理论和技术为基础，建立基于GIS的溶质运移模型，将对溶质运移的规律及其对环境的影响，做出更深入和准确的描述。