Quality Analysis on Spatial Planning Pattern of Rural Area in Southern Shaanxi, China

There have been many studies that have only focused on factors affecting the spatial distribution of rural settlements, without paying attention to their function and scale. China’s mountainous rural area has many problems, such as a fragile ecological environment, poor infrastructure and limited public service facilities. As a result, mountainous rural settlements demonstrate a disorderly and scattered layout. This research takes southern Shaanxi as its research area and uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to analyze the field survey data, revealing the spatial format of rural settlements and its influencing factors. The research results show that: (1) The spatial structure of mountainous settlements can be summarized as falling into three types—agglomeration type, belt type, and dispersion type. The individual settlements are discrete, and the spatial structure of the settlement groups exhibits small-scale clustering in a large area. (2) The influencing factors of spatial structure are ranked thus—geomorphological conditions > population quantity > land use scale. (3) The number of settlements in the study area is constantly decreasing, and their boundaries are gradually shrinking, showing randomly distributed characteristics. (4) A radius of 284.12 m can be used as a measure of the development scope of the village to control the scope of settlement construction. The objective of the research is to classify the spatial structure and propose the most optimal spatial mode in mountainous rural areas.

Study on Passive Heating Involving Firewalls with an Additional Sunlight Room in Rural Residential Buildings

With the growth in China’s economic GDP, energy consumption has increased year by year. The energy demand of rural residential buildings is 223 million tons of standard coal equivalent, accounting for 24% of the national energy demand. Therefore, an energy-saving design for rural residences is necessary. This research took the traditional residences in southern Shaanxi as the research object and combined the cooking methods in southern Shaanxi with solar heating, proposing a sunlight heating system with an additional firewall. The system is composed of a firewall system and a sunlight system. The combination of the two systems prolongs the heating time and makes up for the lack of intermittent heating. The firewall principle involves using the heat generated by cooking through the heat storage and heat release capacity of the wall, and using the principle of heat radiation and convection to increase the indoor temperature. Meanwhile, the principle of the additional sunlight room involves using the external facade of the building to establish an additional sunlight room, by absorbing the heat radiation of the sun and using the principle of heat transfer from the wall. The rapid loss of indoor hot air is avoided, the heating time is prolonged, and part of the heat is retained, thereby improving the heating efficiency. A model was established based on the typical residential model in southern Shaanxi, and the presence or absence of solar radiation on the wall was used as the research variable. Using ANSYS software to simulate the analysis, it is concluded that the firewall–sunlight system can extend the heating time and meet the continuous heating demand, and the heating effect is better than that of the firewall heating system alone. When the walls have solar radiation, the annual heat load reduction rate of the buildings under the new system is 20.21%. When the walls do not have solar radiation, the annual heat load reduction rate of the buildings under the new system is 8.56%.

Coupling Coordination Analysis of Livelihood Efficiency and Land Use for Households in Poverty-Alleviated Mountainous Areas

The interaction between livelihood means and land use pattern of households is the core of the interactive coupling of the human-land system. This study focuses on Qinba mountainous area in southern Shaanxi province, a typical poverty-alleviated mountainous area. With the help of the coupling coordination degree model, kernel density estimation, and trend surface analysis, this study constructs the coupling coordination degree of livelihood efficiency and land use for households, and analyzes the differences between households’ livelihood efficiency and land use level, as well as the coupling coordination relationship between households livelihood efficiency and land use in different types and regions. The research conclusions are as follows. (1) For households in the Qinba mountainous area, southern Shaanxi province, the livelihood efficiency is at a medium level of 0.681, the land use is at a low level of 0.127, while the coupling coordination degree 0.526 is at the primary coordination state. (2) With the increase of nonagricultural degree, the coupling coordination degree of households increases first, and then decreases. (3) The coupling coordination degree for households east-to-west is “sagging”, while south-to-north diagram is “hogging”. (4) The distribution of the coupling coordination degree for agriculture-dependent households east-to-west (the “sagging” diagram) is opposite to the other types of households. By analogy, the distribution of the coupling coordination degree for nonagriculture and agriculture-dependent households north-to-south (the “hogging” diagram) is opposite to the other types of households. The coupling coordination between the households’ livelihood efficiency and land use level is affected by the households’ regional development level, natural resources, geographic location, infrastructure availability and many other factors. Making appropriate livelihood development plans based on the types of households and regional space can both effectively improve the livelihood conditions, as well as offer guidance in promoting regional human-land activity coordination and ensuring sustainable development.

Comprehensive Risk Assessment of High Temperature Disaster to Kiwifruit in Shaanxi Province, China

In recent years, the main kiwifruit producing region, central-south Shaanxi Province, has often suffered from the threat of extreme high temperatures. Assessing the risk of high-temperature disasters in the region is essential for the rational planning of agricultural production and the development of resilience measures. In this study, a database was established to assess the risk of a high-temperature disaster to kiwifruit. Then, four aspects, hazard, vulnerability, exposure and disaster prevention and mitigation capacity, were taken into account and 19 indexes were selected to make an assessment of the risk of a high-temperature disaster. At the same time, 16 indexes were selected for the assessment of the climatic suitability of kiwifruit in terms of light, heat, water, soil and topography, and were used as one of the indexes for exposure assessment. The analytic hierarchy process and the entropy weighting method were combined to solve the weights for each index. The results reveal that: (1) The Guanzhong Plain has a high climatic suitability for kiwifruit, accounting for 15.14% of the study area. (2) The central part of the study area and southern Shaanxi are at high risk, accounting for 22.7% of the study area. The major kiwifruit producing areas in Shaanxi Province (e.g., Baoji) are at a low risk level, which is conducive to the development of the kiwifruit industry. Our study is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of the risk of a high-temperature disaster to the economic fruit kiwifruit, providing a reference for disaster resilience and mitigation.

Changes in the epidemiological characteristics of human brucellosis in Shaanxi Province from 2008 to 2020

In the present study, surveys of case numbers, constituent ratios, conventional biotyping, and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) were applied to characterize the incidence rate and epidemiological characteristics of human brucellosis in Shaanxi Province, China. A total of 12,215 human brucellosis cases were reported during 2008–2020, for an annual average incidence rate of 2.48/100,000. The most significant change was that the county numbers of reported cases increased from 36 in 2008 to 84 in 2020, with a geographic expansion trend from northern Shaanxi to Guanzhong, and southern Shaanxi regions; the incidence rate declined in previous epidemic northern Shaanxi regions while increasing each year in Guanzhong and southern Shaanxi regions such as Hancheng and Xianyang. The increased incidence was closely related to the development of large-scale small ruminants (goats and sheep) farms in Guanzhong and some southern Shaanxi regions. Another significant feature was that student cases (n = 261) were ranked second among all occupations, accounting for 2.14% of the total number of cases, with the majority due to drinking unsterilized goat milk. Three Brucella species were detected (B. melitensis (bv. 1, 2, 3 and variant), B. abortus bv. 3/6, and B. suis bv. 1) and were mainly distributed in the northern Shaanxi and Guanzhong regions. Three known STs (ST8, ST2, and ST14) were identified based on MLST analysis. The characteristics that had not changed were that B. melitensis strains belonging to the ST8 population were the dominant species and were observed in all nine regions during the examined periods. Strengthened human and animal brucellosis surveillance and restriction of the transfer of infected sheep (goats) as well as students avoiding drinking raw milk are suggested as optimal control strategies.

Spatiotemporal Assessment of Land Marketization and Its Driving Forces for Sustainable Urban–Rural Development in Shaanxi Province in China

In recent years, market-oriented allocation of land has been promoted to support rural revitalization and urban–rural integrated development. To follow the path of sustainable development, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of resource utilization and to rationally allocate and use resources on the premise of ensuring the sustainable use of resources. This study aims to measure the degree of land marketization in Shaanxi Province, China during the period 2008–2019 and analyze its driving forces. The methods used include Gray Relation Analysis and Hot Spot Analysis. The MK trend method was used to analyze the average area of land acquired through Bidding–Listing–Auction (B-L-A), protocol, and allocation methods. The results show that the land marketization level in Shaanxi declined from 2008 to 2014 and fluctuated upwards from 2014 to 2019. In addition, B-L-A transactions increased across the province. There was little spatial heterogeneity of land marketization, but southern Shaanxi had less land marketization than the other key areas. Urbanization, non-agricultural output, and foreign direct investment were found to be the main driving factors of land marketization, while the influence of fixed asset investment and per capita disposable income declined each year. Based on these findings, we suggest that there is a need for land management reforms and urbanization efforts to encourage land marketization in southern Shaanxi. Further, we suggest that northern Shaanxi would benefit from optimizing the land use structure and focusing on the energy land market. This study also provides theoretical support for realizing the reform of the marketization of national land elements, the healthy operation of urban land marketization, and sustainable urban and rural development.

Study on the Passive Heating System of a Heated Cooking Wall in Dwellings: A Case Study of Traditional Dwellings in Southern Shaanxi, China

In China, research on winter heating and energy saving for residential buildings mainly focuses on urban residences rather than rural ones. According to the 2018 China Building Energy Consumption Research Report, rural residential buildings emit about 423 million tons of carbon, accounting for 21% of the country’s total carbon emissions. According to the research on China’s greenhouse gas inventory, the main sources of carbon emissions in rural areas are from cooking and the burning of fuelwood and biomass for heating in winter. In this study, the southern Shaanxi area, which is hot in summer and cold in winter, was selected as the research site, and a fire wall system was planned that combines cooking and heating facilities in residential buildings. The system uses the heat generated by cooking and the heat storage capacity of the wall, as well as the principle of thermal radiation and heat convection, to increase the indoor temperature. The advantage is that the hot air generated is mainly concentrated in the inside of the wall, which reduces the direct contact with the cold outdoor air and avoids excess heat loss. In this study, in addition to considering the influence of the cooking fire wall system on the indoor temperature, the difference in the outer wall with or without solar thermal radiation was also considered. The research results show that the use of a cooking fire wall heating system reduces the annual heat load of the building to 440.8318 KW·h, which is a reduction rate of 7.91%. When there is solar radiation on the outer wall, the annual thermal load of the building is reduced by 1104.723 kW·h, and the reduction rate is 19.84%.