scholarly journals DYNAMIC STATE OF ECOSYSTEM CARRYING CAPACITY UNDER ISLAND URBANIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF PINGTAN ISLAND IN THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST OF CHINA

Author(s):  
Sheng Gao ◽  
Huihui Sun ◽  
Guangxi Cao ◽  
Lin Zhao ◽  
Runjie Wang ◽  
...  

The assessment of ecological environment during the large-scale development of islands is a major topic in the study of current coastal islands. Choosing the appropriate assessment method to evaluate the suitability of carrying capacity of islands and making relevant suggestions are significant to the sustainable development of islands. Ecological footprint method is used to analyze the ecological carrying capacity of Pingtan Island (PI) from 2005 to 2016 for promoting the coordinated rational development and construction and ecological environment of the island. Although PI is in rapid urban development and construction, the island maintains secure and stable ecological conditions. PI is used as a research case to analyze the sustainable development of the ecological environment through the carrying capacity of the island ecosystem.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5234
Author(s):  
Mustafa S. Al-Tekreeti ◽  
Salwa M. Beheiry ◽  
Vian Ahmed

Numerous decision support systems have been developed to address the decision-making process in organizations. However, there are no developed mechanisms to track commitment down the line to the decisions made by corporate leaders. This paper is a portion of a study that establishes a framework for a comprehensive metric system to assess commitment to Sustainable Development (SD) decisions down the line in capital projects, and sets the groundwork for further development of performance indicators for SD outcomes. This ultimately leads to investigating the relationship between commitment to corporate decisions and better project performance in SD parameters. Hence, this study explores the literature to extract relevant parameters that reflect the degree of the project participants’ commitment to SD decisions and to develop commitment indicators. The study created then validated an index to track this commitment along the project stages: the Sustainable Development Commitment Tracking Tool (SDCTT). The SDCTT was tested on an infrastructure project case study. In this paper, techniques relevant to the first stage of projects (planning and definition) are presented. The SDCTT is the groundwork for the future development of performance indicators for SD outcomes, and within the postulated model should ultimately contribute towards reducing project waste, energy use, and carbon emissions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1459
Author(s):  
Wei Zhou ◽  
Ayman Elshkaki ◽  
Shuai Zhong ◽  
Lei Shen

Land carrying capacity is an important indicator to quantitatively assess and judge the extents of sustainable economic developing and coexistent harmonizing between human and nature. The significance of land carrying capacity has been highlighted recently by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, which set clear requirements for arable, construction, and ecological lands. Theories and models of land carrying capacity, however, are suffering from the interference of artificial parameter setting and poor applicability. This paper attempts to overcome these limitations and propose a single factor assessment of the carrying capacity of cultivated land, construction land, and ecological land in terms of the relative carrying capacity from the perspective of a single factor assessment. Through mutual comparison, we found that the deviation caused by simulated parameter setting has been eliminated, and the relative status of each province and/or region in China has been obtained, which could provide a reference for the management and utilization of land resources. We argue that China can achieve basic self-sufficiency in both space capacity and food production without placing pressure on the global sustainable development. The results also indicate that carrying capacity state of the advanced development areas such as the eastern coastal region is relatively poor, while the carrying capacity state of the western region is relatively good.


Author(s):  
Laura Ballerini ◽  
Sylvia I. Bergh

AbstractOfficial data are not sufficient for monitoring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): they do not reach remote locations or marginalized populations and can be manipulated by governments. Citizen science data (CSD), defined as data that citizens voluntarily gather by employing a wide range of technologies and methodologies, could help to tackle these problems and ultimately improve SDG monitoring. However, the link between CSD and the SDGs is still understudied. This article aims to develop an empirical understanding of the CSD-SDG link by focusing on the perspective of projects which employ CSD. Specifically, the article presents primary and secondary qualitative data collected on 30 of these projects and an explorative comparative case study analysis. It finds that projects which use CSD recognize that the SDGs can provide a valuable framework and legitimacy, as well as attract funding, visibility, and partnerships. But, at the same time, the article reveals that these projects also encounter several barriers with respect to the SDGs: a widespread lack of knowledge of the goals, combined with frustration and political resistance towards the UN, may deter these projects from contributing their data to the SDG monitoring apparatus.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 344
Author(s):  
Haochen Yu ◽  
Jiu Huang ◽  
Chuning Ji ◽  
Zi’ao Li

A large-scale energy and chemical industry base is an important step in the promotion of the integrated and coordinated development of coal and its downstream coal-based industry. A number of large-scale energy and chemical industrial bases have been built in the Yellow River Basin that rely on its rich coal resources. However, the ecological environment is fragile in this region. Once the eco-environment is destroyed, the wildlife would lose its habitat. Therefore, this area has attracted wide attention regarding the development of the coal-based industry while also protecting the ecological environment. An ecological network could improve landscape connectivity and provide ideas for ecological restoration. This study took the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industrial Base as a case study. Morphological spatial pattern analysis was applied to extract core patches. The connectivity of the core patches was evaluated, and then the ecological source patches were recognized. The minimum cumulative resistance model, hydrologic analysis and circuit theory were used to simulate the ecological network. Then, ecological corridors and ecological nodes were classified. The results were as follows: (1) The vegetation fractional coverage has recently been significantly improved. The area of core patches was 22,433.30 ha. In addition, 18 patches were extracted as source patches, with a total area of 9455.88 ha; (2) Fifty-eight potential ecological corridors were simulated. In addition, it was difficult to form a natural ecological corridor because of the area’s great resistance. Moreover, the connectivity was poor between the east and west; (3) A total of 52 potential ecological nodes were simulated and classified. The high-importance nodes were concentrated in the western grassland and Gobi Desert. This analysis indicated that restoration would be conducive to the ecological landscape in this area. Furthermore, five nodes with high importance but low vegetation fractional coverage should be given priority in later construction. In summary, optimizing the ecological network to achieve ecological restoration was suggested in the study area. The severe eco-environmental challenges urgently need more appropriate policy guidance in the large energy and chemical bases. Thus, the ecological restoration and ecological network construction should be combined, the effectiveness of ecological restoration could be effectively achieved, and the cost could also be reduced.


2010 ◽  
Vol 129-131 ◽  
pp. 42-45
Author(s):  
Li Fang Qiao ◽  
Lei Feng ◽  
Lian Fang Yao ◽  
Xin Zheng Li

The landscape industry has become one of the industries with higher resource and energy consumption, and the implementation of urban low-carbon landscape construction is of great significance to improve the ecological environment. In this study, the method of low-carbon landscape construction was studied from two aspects including the carbon source control and carbon sink, as well as both direct and indirect effect. The results showed that the low-carbon landscape construction can be controlled from five aspects including landscape planning, landscape design, low-carbon landscape technology, low-carbon landscape behavior and low-carbon policy. Through a series of low-carbon measures, carbon emissions can be controlled at a reasonable level during the urban landscape construction, which also promotes the sustainable development of urban ecological environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Rhian Croke ◽  
Helen Dale ◽  
Ally Dunhill ◽  
Arwyn Roberts ◽  
Malvika Unnithan ◽  
...  

The global disconnect between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), has been described as ‘a missed opportunity’. Since devolution, the Welsh Government has actively pursued a ‘sustainable development’ and a ‘children’s rights’ agenda. However, until recently, these separate agendas also did not contribute to each other, although they culminated in two radical and innovative pieces of legislation; the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure (2013) and the Well-being and Future Generations (Wales) Act (2015). This article offers a case study that draws upon the SDGs and the CRC and considers how recent guidance to Welsh public bodies for implementation attempts to contribute to a more integrated approach. It suggests that successful integration requires recognition of the importance of including children in deliberative processes, using both formal mechanisms, such as local authority youth forums, pupil councils and a national youth parliament, and informal mechanisms, such as child-led research, that enable children to initiate and influence sustainable change.


2012 ◽  
Vol 616-618 ◽  
pp. 1388-1393
Author(s):  
Hong Jun Lei ◽  
Lina Yin ◽  
Bei Dou Xi

Rapid social-economic development and the ever-increasing water pollutant discharge of Wuliangsuhai lake basin made the water quality deteriorated; the lake eutrophication intensified and heavily restricted the sustainable development of the watershed’s social economy. Wuliangsuhai lake basin was selected as the study area. By the use of system dynamics simulation model the water environment and social economy were connected, and three kinds of improved scenarios (resource-environment constrained type, social economy constrained type, coordinated development type) were proposed based on the inertial and planning schemes. Ten indexes of water environment carrying capacity, i.e. the GDP per capita, ratio of industrial output to GDP, et al., were selected, and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was used. Results showed that, the water environmental capacity utilization ratios of COD and TN in the resource-environment constrained scenario were 69.5% and 57.9% in 2020, respectively. And the water environment carrying capacity index increased from 0.19 in 2008 to 0.31 in 2020. Under the coordinated development scenario, the surplus environmental capacity of COD and TN were 1755.46t/a, 260.21t/a respectively, and the water environment carrying capacity index was up to 0.29 in 2020. The sustainable development plan was proposed and some feasible suggestions and strategies were put forward.


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