Wetland economic valuation approaches and prospects in China

Ecosystem services valuation seeks to increase the social relevance of ecosystem characteristics, the underlying biological mechanisms that support services, by making the contribution of ecosystems to human well-being explicit. Economic valuation can help management by clarifying the full range of benefits and costs of proposed management actions. In the past two decades, economic valuation of wetland ecosystem services has become one of the most significant scientific priorities for wetland protection. In this paper, we provide an overview of ecosystem services, and summarize the main interdisciplinary approaches to measure and value wetland ecosystem services. We identified four main methodological gaps preventing progress on wetland valuation of ecosystem services in China, which are: 1) confusion on terminology like intermediate and final ecosystem services, 2) lack of ecological production functions to link ecosystem characteristics to final ecosystem services, 3) static valuation making it difficult to evaluate the trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services, and 4) lack of clear guidance on relating ecological compensation programs to conservation targets. Overcoming these gaps is important to inform wetland compensation mechanisms and conservation policies. We propose future research on wetland ecosystem services in China should be focused on: 1) defining final ecosystem services based on beneficiary preferences and underlying biophysical mechanisms, 2) establishing wetland monitoring programs at specific sites to collect data on final ecosystem service indicators and ecosystem characteristic metrics to create ecological production functions for economic valuation and rescaling techniques, and 3) incorporating wetland ecosystem service values into decision-making processes to inform wetland management.     

Assessing suitability of rural settlements using an improved technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution

Land suitability assessment is a prerequisite phase in land use planning; it guides toward optimal land use by providing information on the opportunities and constraints involved in the use of a given land area. A geographic information system-based procedure, known as rural settlement suitability evaluation (RSSE) using an improved technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), was adopted to determine the most suitable area for constructing rural settlements in different geographical locations. Given the distribution and independence of rural settlements, a distinctive evaluation criteria system that differed from that of urban suitability was established by considering the level of rural infrastructure services as well as living and working conditions. The unpredictable mutual interference among evaluation factors has been found in practical works. An improved TOPSIS using Mahalanobis distance was applied to solve the unpredictable correlation among the criteria in a suitability evaluation. Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses obtained via Monte Carlo simulation were performed to examine the robustness of the model. Daye, a resource-based city with rapid economic development, unsatisfied rural development, and geological environmental problems caused by mining, was used as a case study. Results indicate the following findings: 1) The RSSE model using the improved TOPSIS can assess the suitability of rural settlements, and the suitability maps generated using the improved TOPSIS have higher information density than those generated using traditional TOPSIS. The robustness of the model is improved, and the uncertainty is reduced in the suitability results. 2) Highly suitable land is mainly distributed in the northeast of the study area, and the majority of which is cultivated land, thereby leading to tremendous pressure on the loss of cultivated land. 3) Lastly, 12.54% of the constructive expansion permitted zone and 8.36% of the constructive expansion conditionally permitted zone are situated in an unsuitable area, which indicates that the general planning of Daye lacks the necessary verification of suitability evaluation. Guidance is provided on the development strategy of rural settlement patches to support decision making in general land use planning.     

滇东南富宁地区基性侵入岩及喷出岩时代

在滇东南富宁地区基性侵入岩、喷出岩较发育,前人将其划分为"半瓦型"侵入岩、"安定型"侵入岩和"龙康型"喷出岩3类,3类岩石普遍缺乏可靠的同位素年代学资料。在对富宁地区基性侵入岩、喷出岩进行区域地质调查的基础上,应用LAICP-MS技术对其进行锆石U-Pb测年,在半瓦型侵入岩和安定型侵入岩中分别获得了254.0±2.0Ma和244.2±4.4Ma的加权平均年龄,在龙康型喷出岩中获得251.9±3.0Ma和255.92±0.72Ma加权平均年龄。结合野外调查和综合研究,将富宁地区"安定型"侵入岩的时代界定于中三叠世,将"半瓦型"侵入岩和"龙康型"喷出岩的时代界定于晚二叠世。