Farmers’ Strategies to Climate Change and Urbanization: Potential of Ecosystem-Based Adaptation in Rural Chengdu, Southwest China

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is emerging as a cost-effective approach for helping people adapt to climate and non-climate changes. Nowadays, climate change and urbanization have affected agricultural systems, but it is not clear how rural communities have responded or adapted to those changes. Here, we chose two typical villages in the Chengdu Plain, southwest China, through sociological surveys on 90 local farmers with a semi-structured questionnaire, participatory observation, geospatial analysis of land use and land cover, and a literature review, to explore the local people’s perception of changes or disturbances and their adaptation strategies from the perspective of EbA. The results showed that climate change and urbanization had impacted agricultural systems dramatically in the last 40 years. In two case-study sites, climate change and urbanization were perceived by most local farmers as the main drivers impacting on agricultural production, but various resource-use models containing abundant traditional knowledge or practices as well as modern tools, such as information communication technology (ICT), were applied to adapt to these changes. Moreover, culture service through the adaptive decoration of rural landscapes is becoming a new perspective for implementing an EbA strategy. Finally, our findings highlighted the potential value of an EbA strategy for sustaining urban-rural integrated development and enhancing the resilience of agricultural systems.

Analysis On The Spatial Differentiation Characteristics of Poverty Risk Caused By Disaster Under The Stress of Geological Disasters – A Case Study of Sichuan Province

Research on the poverty risk caused by disasters in disaster - prone areas is a useful exploration to coordinate social economic development with disaster prevention and reduction, and is of great significance to regional sustainable development. Based on statistical data and spatial data, this paper takes Sichuan Province as the typical research area. Remote sensing and geographic information technology are used to study the poverty risk caused by disasters based on the quantitative evaluation of geological disasters risk and regional development level. the spatial differentiation characteristics of poverty risk caused by disasters are explored on the 1 km × 1 km grid scale. The results indicate that: (1) The overall risk of geological disasters in Sichuan Province is relatively high, with high and relatively high risk areas accounting for more than 40%, low and relatively low risk areas accounting for less than 30%. The risks in Mountain and Ravine Areas are significantly higher than other areas. (2) The regional development level in Sichuan Province is relatively high, but with significant the spatial differences. The development level of high-altitude areas and remote mountainous areas is quite different from that of the Chengdu Plain in the middle Sichuan Province. the problem of uneven development in the east, middle, and west is prominent. (3) The poverty risk caused by disasters is high, and the spatial pattern presents a characteristic of “high in the west and low in the east” with high positive spatial correlation. High - High Cluster Areas are mainly distributed in western and southwestern Sichuan. Low - Low Outlier Areas are mainly distributed in Chengdu Plain and Hilly Areas of Sichuan Basin. High - Low Outlier and Low - High Outlier Areas occupy a relatively small percentage with scattered distribution. This paper provides a reference for the coordinated management of disaster prevention and reduction, as well as social and economic development in underdeveloped areas.

Neolithic Rice Cultivation and Consequent Landscape Changes at the Baodun Site, Southwestern China

Identifying when agricultural expansion has occurred and how it altered the landscape is critical for understanding human social survival strategies as well as current ecological diversity. In the present study, phytolith records of three profiles from the Baodun site area were dated to the period from 7,500 to 2,500 aBP by optically stimulated luminescence and 14C dating, providing the first evidence that the Asian cultivated rice (Oryza sativa) progenitor was distributed in the Chengdu Plain as early as 7,500 aBP. The percentage of rice bulliform with ≥9 scales and the concentration of rice phytoliths sharply increased by approximately 4,200 aBP, suggesting that rice cultivation occupied a dominant position in survival strategy no later than approximately 4,200 aBP, which might be driven by climate deterioration in eastern China. The results further showed that the proportion of Bambusoideae phytoliths increased synchronously with the increase in the proportion of rice phytoliths, suggesting that the vegetation structure near the site was changed intentionally as a consequence of increasing rice agricultural activity since 4,200 aBP. The present study contributes to a deeper understanding of the distribution of wild rice and rice farming throughout the Baodun culture in the Chengdu Plain, and it also provides a glimpse of how humans intentionally changed the vegetation landscape on a local scale.

Analysis on the Degree of Coupling Coordination Between Higher Education and Regional Economic Development in China: Take Sichuan Province of China as an Example

To explore the relationship between China's higher education and the level of regional economic development, the coupling coordination degree of panel data from China's Sichuan province across 2011-2018 is analyzed based on self-constructed evaluation index system and with a integration of various methods including entropy value method, coupling coordination degree model and grey forecasting model. The results show that the coupling coordination degree between higher education and economic development in five Sichuan districts is not high, among which Chengdu Plain Economic Zone is much higher than the other four: southern Sichuan Economic Zone, northeast Sichuan Economic Zone, Panxi Economic Zone and northwest Sichuan Ecological Demonstration Zone. The study also predicts that in the five years, the coupling coordination degree of the five districts in Sichuan will be still not high, and none of them will broke through the incoordinate stage and entered the coordination stage. Moreover, the difference between the prefecture-level cities in Chengdu Plain Economic Zone is the largest.

Influence of Regional Erosion and Sedimentary Loading on Fault Activities in Active Fold-Thrust Belts: Insights From Discrete Element Simulation and the Southern and Central Longmen Shan Fold-Thrust Belt

Four groups of discrete element models (DEMs) were set-up to simulate and analyze the influence of regional erosion and sedimentary loading on the formation and spatial-temporal evolution of faults in the southern and central Longmen Shan (LMS) active fold-thrust belt. The interior characteristics of faults in the southern and central LMS fold-thrust belt were also evaluated during the interaction of tectonic processes and surface processes according to the stress-strain analysis from DEM results. The results showed that synkinematic erosion promoted the reactivation of pre-existing faults in thrust wedges and also retarded the formation and development of new incipient faults in the pre-wedge regions. Meanwhile, synkinematic sedimentation also delayed the development of new incipient faults in the pre-wedge regions by promoting the development of thrust faults in the front of thrust wedges, causing these thrust wedges in supercritical stages with relatively narrow wedge lengths. According to these DEM results, we infer that: 1) The characteristics of erosion and sedimentation in the central and southern LMS have important influences on the activities of large faults which are extended into the deep detachment layer; 2) Besides differential erosion, the differential sedimentary loading may also be one of the important factors for the along-strike differential evolution of the LMS fold-thrust belt. This kind of differential deposition may lead to differential fault activity and uplift in the interior thrust wedge and pre-wedge region in the central and southern LMS; 3) Compared to the northern LMS, the central LMS and southern LMS is more conducive to the occurrence of earthquakes, because of synkinematic sedimentation (such as the growth of Chengdu plain) has a greater blocking effect on the stress propagation and strain convergence on the fault planes of front faults of an active thrust wedge.