After World War II, the economic recovery of Western Europe implied a swift economic transition for all regions, including the area of the Alps, although affecting various parts at different paces and stages. The resulting out-migration led to population decline in some mountain valleys and regions since the 1950s. Such negative population development trends are widespread across mountain areas of the world, including China, where out-migration started after its rural reform in the 1970s. The effect was in some cases even more significant than in the Alps, with the first villages being deserted in the 1980s. Current estimations report about 380,000 rural villages in China being abandoned between 2000–2016, particularly in its mountain regions. While lower population densities might alleviate the pressures on ecology and contribute to environmental benefits, these movements aggravate a spiraling-down process of local economies and culture. In the Alps, many regions that were facing challenges of out-migration and economic weaknesses focused on local initiatives, including agritourism schemes that provided both economic incentives and stability to involved mountain farmers, and the continuation of local land management systems. However, China’s interest for promoting rural action and tourism-oriented farm diversification only started more recently, with a range of rural tourism and agricultural tourism initiatives emerging. This paper focuses on lessons from successful initiatives in the Alps that might induce and strengthen China’s search for elaborating agritourism activities in mountain areas. In consequence, agritourism might be assessed as a contribution to mitigate out-migration from mountain regions and a core element of the future sustainable development of the Alps and the Chinese countryside.
Abstract In the continental crust, the probability of dike propagation out of magma chambers is governed by thermal, rheological, and pressure conditions of magma chamber‐wall rock systems. Incremental injection of melt into an average‐size, laccolith‐shaped, midcrustal magma chamber produces a volume of mobile magma at the bottom of the chamber that has the potential to escape as dikes through the upper, immobile portion of the chamber and the roof. Here we numerically model the conditions needed for dike propagation out of a magma chamber during continuous and episodic injections of melt into the chamber. The roles of magma buoyancy and overpressure from melt injections in generating dikes are explored within 1.78 × 10 4 to 1.78 × 10 8 Pa·s range of magma viscosities ( μ mag ), 10 to 40 GPa range of elastic moduli ( E ) of the immobile top portion of the magma chamber, and 10 and 20 kyr durations of chamber growth. During episodic, high‐flux melt injections (tens of km 3 /yr), magma overpressure can reach >100 MPa and initiate dike propagation even when μ mag and E are near the high ends of the examined ranges. The probability of generating dikes diminishes when the injection flux is lower. Continuous low‐flux injections favor magma accumulation because injection overpressure never exceeds 20 MPa. During either continuous or episodic growth of magma chamber, there is never a sufficient amount of mobile magma in the chamber for dikes to be induced by magma buoyancy alone.
With the technology of GPS, we conduct precise deformation monitoring of the Laozaoping Landslide in Chongqing for a flood period. By virtue of the precipitation data close to the landslide in the monitoring period, we researched the quantitative relationship model between the landslide displacement and precipitation. In addition, we made researches on the impacts of precipitation distribution on displacement and advanced the Landslide-Causing Index (LCI). The researches show the model for displacement of Laozaoping landslide and precipitation is statistically significant; the precipitation distribution exerts more significant effect on displacement than the amount of precipitation; it is very hard to precisely estimate the displacement of landslide in terms of the precipitation and soil moisture only.
This paper examines whether ISO 9000 certification benefits service firms in terms of their financial performance and promotes sustainable improvement. We argue that in a developing country setting such as China, the massive benefits brought by the signalling effect of the certification can discourage firms’ motivation to fully implement the standard of certification and lead to the decline of investment on productivity-improving activities. In other words, the certification may have negative effects on the productivity of certified firms. We investigate 89,024 firms in Chinese service industries to assess the impacts of the certification on sales, productivity and profitability of these firms. To address the potential selection bias of ISO 9000 certification, the Propensity Score Matching method and Coarsened Exact Matching method were used. Our key findings are that the ISO 9000 certification does help to increase the total amount of sales, but it decreases the productivity and profitability of these certified service firms. We also find that earlier certifiers seem to gain larger advantage in sales but more reduction in productivity, and firms with higher level of technology intensity seem to obtain a larger increase in sales and less productivity loss after receiving their ISO 9000 certification.
In order to clarify and quantify the relationship between vegetation coverage and topography in Chongqing, MODIS-250 m 16 days NDVI from 2010 s to 2013 s was used to synthesize monthly and seasonal NDVI enlarged 100 times. Then the NDVI was divided into 6 height districts and 5 slope districts. The relationship between NDVI and height/slope was analyzed and the equations of NDVI and height/slope were established. The results showed as following: (1) Different month and season have obvious effect on the relationship between NDVI and height/slope. The value of NDVI in months 6-9 and summer continued to increase with the increase of altitude. While NDVI increased firstly then decreased with the increase of height in months 10-12 and 1-5, seasons of spring, autumn and winter. The turning height of the NDVI value decreased in cold month/season and increased in warm month/season. The trend was relatively obvious and simple with increase of slope that was the NDVI monotonically increased with slope increasing. (2) The increasing trend of NDVI with height/slope increasing gradually decreases. (3) There was good binomial relationship between NDVI and height and most of these passed correlation coefficient test (P<0.001). There was binomial and exponential relationship between NDVI and slope and most of the equations passed correlation coefficient test (P<0.001).
Annually, millions of hectares of forest lands around the world are destroyed by fires. To minimize the fire-caused losses, more studies on the risk prediction of forest fires need to be carried out. For predicting the risk of forest fires in cloud-rich areas (e.g., the southwest of China), the synergetic use of operational forecasting systems and remote sensing-based models is expected to have a consistent performance. Therefore, we proposed in this study a new model based on ant-miner algorithm which has a good capability of solving multivariable and non-linear problems in the synergetic modeling of multi-source data. Based on historical fire data during 2000–2018 in Chongqing city, its performance was tested, and then was compared with that of other three models (i.e., meteorological data-, Artificial Neural Network-, and Support Vector Machine-based models). Results showed that, without interference from human factors, the risk predictions of proposed model were more objective. And, its mined-rules were easier to understand and also portable across multiple GIS platforms. Moreover, the proposed model has a better performance at predicting risk levels (i.e., overall accuracy was 79.02% and Kappa coefficient was 0.678) and the spatial distribution of its predictions were more detailed. This research indicated that the ant-miner algorithm-based model was more effective and reliable, and it could be used for constructing the operational system of risk predictions for forest fires in cloud-rich areas.
The Hengduan Mountains, situated on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, are the longest and widest north-south-oriented mountain range in China, exerting a significant influence on the ecological and geographical pattern. Understanding the topographic and geomorphological characteristics of the Hengduan Mountains is fundamental and crucial for research in related fields such as ecology, geography, and sustainability. In this study, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data were utilized to extract and analyze the topography and geomorphology (TG) pattern. TG maps have been developed to quantitatively classify the TG types in the Hengduan Mountains by combining the five factors of elevation, slope, aspect, relief and landform. The spatial distribution and quantitative characteristics of these factors were mapped and investigated using geographic information systems. The results revealed that: (1) The Hengduan Mountains exhibit an elongated north-south distribution, with an average elevation of approximately 3746 m, an average slope of around 25°, and an average relief of about 266 m. (2) The Hengduan Mountains display significant elevation differences, with an overall high elevation, characterized by a trend of lower elevation in the east and higher elevation in the west, as well as irregular orientations of various aspects. (3) The 19 landform types were identified; the landform types of the Hengduan Mountains are primarily composed of low-relief high-mountains (42.0618%), low-relief mid-mountains (22.4624%), and high-elevation hills (20.5839%). The results of the study can provide data and information support for the ecology, environmental protection and sustainable development of the Hengduan Mountains.
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