Morphometric and geological conditions for sediment accumulation in the Udava River,Outer Carpathians,Slovakia

The accumulation of sediment in river channels is a phenomenon that is not only influenced by the channel morphology, but also by the physical and geographical characteristics and the endogenous and exogenous processes taking place in the catchment. This paper presents an analysis of the impact the changes in lithological conditions have on the morphological and morphometric parameters of the Udava River channel and their relation to the channel accumulation forms representative of the river’s longitudinal profile as well as of its planform. Results document when accumulation forms occur and what is their spatial distribution within the longitudinal and cross-sectional river profiles. More resistant structures created sections with a lower degree of sedimentation, while in depression segments the degree of sedimentation was higher. With the increase in longitudinal slope, the impact of channel width on the average channel bar size increased. Also a difference in the accumulation was observed between the left and right bank which could be possibly explained by the impact of Coriolis force.     

Potential promoted productivity and spatial patterns of medium- and low-yield cropland land in China

With a continuously increasing population and better food consumption levels, improving the efficiency of arable land use and increasing its productivity have become fundamental strategies to meet the growing food security needs in China. A spatial distribution map of medium- and low-yield cropland is necessary to implement plans for cropland improvement. In this study, we developed a new method to identify high-, medium-, and low-yield cropland from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data at a spatial resolution of 500 m. The method could be used to reflect the regional heterogeneity of cropland productivity because the classification standard was based on the regionalization of cropping systems in China. The results showed that the proportion of high-, medium-, and low-yield cropland in China was 21%, 39%, and 40%, respectively. About 75% of the low-yield cropland was located in hilly and mountainous areas, and about 53% of the high-yield cropland was located in plain areas. The five provinces with the largest area of high-yield cropland were all located in the Huang-Huai-Hai region, and the area amounted to 42% of the national high-yield cropland area. Meanwhile, the proportion of high-yield cropland was lower than 15% in Heilongjiang, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, which had the largest area allocated to cropland in China. If all the medium-yield cropland could be improved to the productive level of high-yield cropland and the low-yield cropland could be improved to the level of medium-yield cropland, the total productivity of the land would increase 19% and 24%, respectively.     

Understanding the implications of the EU-LULUCF regulation for the wood supply from EU forests to the EU

Background

In June 2018, the European Parliament and Council of the European Union adopted a legislative regulation for incorporating greenhouse gas emissions and removals from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (EU-LULUCF) under its 2030 Climate and Energy Framework. The LULUCF regulation aim to incentivise EU Member States to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase removals in the LULUCF sector. The regulation, however, does not set a target for increasing the LULUCF carbon sink, but rather includes a ‘no net debit’ target for LULUCF (Forests and Agricultural soils). For Managed Forest Land (MFL) an accounting framework with capped credits for additional mitigation against a set forest reference level (FRL) was agreed for 2021–2030. The FRL gives the projected future carbon sink in the two compliance periods 2021–2025 and 2026–2030 under “continuation of forest management practices as they were in the reference period 2000–2009”. This FRL was disputed by some Member States as it was perceived to put a limit on their future wood harvesting from MFL. Here we simulated with the EFISCEN European forest model the “continuation of forest management practices” and determined the corresponding wood harvest for 26 EU countries under progressing age classes.

Results

The simulations showed that under “continuation of forest management practices” the harvest (wood removals) in the 26 EU countries as a whole can increase from 420 million m³/year in 2000–2009 to 560 million m³/year in 2050 due to progressing age classes. This implies there is a possibility to increase absolute wood harvests without creating debits compared to the forest reference level. However, the manner in which ‘continuation of forest management’ developed with a progressing age class development over time, meant that in some countries the future harvesting exceeded 90% of the increment. Since this generally is considered to be unsustainable we additionally set a harvesting cut-off as max 90% of increment to be harvested for each individual country as a possible interpretation of sustainability criteria that are included in the regulation. Using this additional limit the projected harvest will only increase to 493 million m³/year.

Conclusions

The worry from Member States (MS) that the FRL will prevent any additional harvesting seems unwarranted. Due to differences between Member States concerning the state of their forest resources, the FRL as a baseline for harvesting works out very differently for the different Member States. The FRL may have other unforeseen consequences which we discuss. Under all scenarios the living forest biomass sink shows a decline. This can be counteracted through incentivising measures under Climate Smart Forestry.

     

The influence of rainfall and land use patterns on soil erosion in multi-scale watersheds: A case study in the hilly and gully area on the Loess Plateau,China

Soil erosion has become a major global environmental problem and is particularly acute on the Loess Plateau (LP), China. It is therefore highly important to control this process in order to improve ecosystems, protect ecological security, and maintain the harmonious relationship between humans and nature. We compared the effects of rainfall and land use (LU) patterns on soil erosion in different LP watersheds in this study in order to augment and improve soil erosion models. As most research on this theme has so far been focused on individual study areas, limited analyses of rainfall and LU patterns on soil erosion within different- scale watersheds has so far been performed, a discrepancy which might influence the simulation accuracies of soil erosion models. We therefore developed rainfall and LU pattern indices in this study using the soil erosion evaluation index as a reference and applied them to predict the extent of this process in different-scale watersheds, an approach which is likely to play a crucial role in enabling the comprehensive management of this phenomenon as well as the optimized design of LU patterns. The areas considered in this study included the Qingjian, Fenchuan, Yanhe, and Dali river watersheds. Results showed that the rainfall erosivity factor (R) tended to increase in these areas from 2006 to 2012, while the vegetation cover and management factor (C) tended to decrease. Results showed that as watershed area increased, the effect of rainfall pattern on soil erosion gradually decreased while patterns in LU trended in the opposite direction, as the relative proportion of woodland decreased and the different forms of steep slope vegetation cover became more homogenous. As watershed area increased, loose soil and craggy terrain properties led to additional gravitational erosion and enhanced the effects of both soil and topography.     

淮河流域水文随机方法的径流图化(英文)

Theoretical difficulties for mapping and for estimating river regime characteristics in a large-scale basin remain because of the nature of the variable under study: river flows are related to a specific area, i.e. the drainage basin, and are hierarchically organized in space through the river network with upstream-downstream dependencies. Another limitation is there are not enough gauge stations in developing countries. This presentation aims at de-veloping the hydro-stochastic approach for producing choropleth maps of average annual runoff and computing mean discharge along the main river network for a large-scale basin. The approach applied to mean annual runoff is based on geostatistical interpolation proce-dures coupled with water balance and data uncertainty analyses. It is proved by an applica-tion in the upstream at Bengbu in the Huaihe River Basin, a typical large-scale basin in China. Hydro-stochasitic approach in a first step interpolates to a regular grid net and in a second step the grid values are integrated along rivers. The interpolation scheme includes a con-straint to be able to account for the lateral water balance along the rivers. Grid runoff map with 10 km × 10 km resolution and the discharge map along the river with the 1 km basic length unit are the main results in this study. This kind of statistic approach can be widely used be-cause it avoids the complexity of hydrological models and does not depend on the meteoro-logical data.     

Physicochemistry and Mineralogy of Storm Dust and Dust Sediment in Northern China

Dust sediments collected from 1995 to 1998 in Beijing, Dunhuang, Inner Mongolia, Kashi, the Kunlun Mountains, Lanzhou, Ningxia, the Taklimakan Desert, and Xi‘an, China, were characterized in terms of their physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties. Most aerosols and dust analysed ranged in texture from silty clay to clay loam. Their median particle diameters (Mds) generally ranged between 5 to 63μm,coinciding with those of loess from central China and the finest sand from northwestern China. The dust sediments were characterized by a predominance of SiO2 and Al2O3, followed by K2O. Their SiO2/Al2O3and K2O/SiO2 molar ratios ranged from 5.17 to 8.43 and from 0.009 to 0.0368, respectively. The mass concentration spectrum during a dust storm showed a single peak, rather than the triple peak generally observed under clear sky conditions. The dominant minerals were chlorite, illite, calcite, and dolomite.These physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties were consistent with those of aeolian soils and loess in western and central China. The results suggest that aerosols and fine-gained fractions of dust sediments collected in northern China are mainly composed of soil material transported from the arid and semiarid regions of China and Mongolia by prevailing winds. The rate of deposition and properties of dust falling on eastern China were strongly influenced by meteorological conditions, season, latitude, longitude, and altitude of the sampling sites.     

High-resolution satellite image segmentation using Hölder exponents

Texture in high-resolution satellite images requires substantial amendment in the conventional segmentation algorithms. A measure is proposed to compute the Hölder exponent (HE) to assess the roughness or smoothness around each pixel of the image. The localized singularity information is incorporated in computing the HE. An optimum window size is evaluated so that HE reacts to localized singularity. A two-step iterative procedure for clustering the transformed HE image is adapted to identify the range of HE, densely occupied in the kernel and to partition Hölder exponents into a cluster that matches with the range. Hölder exponent values (noise or not associated with the other cluster) are clubbed to a nearest possible cluster using the local maximum likelihood analysis.     

新疆和田河流域柽柳沙堆的生物地貌发育过程

Tamarix nabkha is one of the most widespread nabkhas,distributing in the arid region of China.Based on the observations outdoors and the simulation experiments in laboratories,analysis in this paper refers to the biological geomorphologic features and growth process of Tamarix nabkhas in the middle and lower reaches of the Hotan River,Xin- jiang.And the results indicate that the ecological type of Tamarix in the study area is a kind of Tugaic soil habitat based on the deep soil of the Populus Diversifolia f...     

Aluminum Consumption and Economic Growth: Evidence from Rich Countries

The article attempts to test the aluminum consumption–economic growth nexus for 20 rich economies for the period 1970–2009. Various panel data unit root and cointegration tests are applied. The series are found to be integrated of order one and cointegrated, especially after controlling for cross-sectional dependence. Moreover, the Blundell–Bond system generalized methods-of-moments is employed to conduct a panel causality test in a vector error-correction mechanism setting. Unidirectional causality running from aluminum consumption to real GDP is uncovered in the short-run, while real GDP is found to Granger-cause aluminum consumption in the long-run. Moreover, a 1% increase in real GDP generates an increase of 0.44% in aluminum consumption in the long-run for the whole panel.