Low efficiency of earth kilns used in the carbonising process of wood to make charcoal has been reported as one of the sources of increasing charcoal wastes in the global south. However, the potential link and approaches of converting charcoal wastes-to-valuable energy and for the environmental health is not well known in Africa. Promoting local community capacity engagement in the production and reutilisation of recycled charcoal wastes at the households’ level is one of important measures to maintain environmental services for sustainability since households make decisions on the type of energy used. This paper, presents an approach of converting charcoal wastes to fuel energy for rural households and environmental health in Kilosa District, Tanzania. To achieve the objective of this research, the primary data were collected through interviews held with 298 randomly selected households, Focus Group Discussions and observations. IBM SPSS statistics version 20 Cross tab tools were used in the data analysis. Results revealed that the conversion of charcoal wastes-to-fuel energy approach used in this research demonstrates the ability of recyclable briquettes made from the locally available charcoal pollutants collected at different stages from earth kilns, to selling centers, improves tree harvest behaviour, adds another fuel energy source through reutilisation, and ultimate reduces pollution at the local level. Thus, the study provides a basis for policymakers to adopt charcoal wastes recycling strategies to address matters related to energy and ultimately enhances environmental health for sustainable development in Tanzania and beyond.

Urban trees are valuable resources for urban areas as they have the capacity to reduce ambient temperatures, mitigate urban heat island effects and reduce runoff of rainwater playing an important role in mitigating the impacts of climate change by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). It also helps to reduce aerial suspended particulate matter, add visual appeal to the urban landscape sequestrating a significant amount of carbon from ambient atmospheric CO2. Carbon storage by urban trees in the ring road area of the Kathmandu Valley was quantified to assess the magnitude and role of urban forests in relation to mitigate the impact of global climate change. A total of 40 sample plots were placed randomly for the detailed carbon assessment. Aboveground and belowground carbon pools were considered in the detailed assessment. Furthermore, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) were maintained through regular monitoring and capacity building of the field crews while collecting the bio-physical data. The assessment recorded a total of 33 different species of plants in the avenue’s plantation sites in ring road. The mean seedling, sapling, and tree density was found to be 2149585 and 185 per hectare. The mean carbon stock per hectare in the avenue plantation of the ring road area was 24.03 tC ha1 and the existing total carbon stock was 7785.72 tC in 2021. Likewise, the total baseline carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in the avenue plantation was found to be 28573.60 tCO2e. The carbon dioxide emission from the transport sector in the ring road area in a full movement scenario was 312888.00 tCO2e per annum, while the net emissions was 42547 tCO2e. There was a deficit of carbon dioxide in terms of stock by avenue plantations of 14000.8 tCO2e.This study indicates that the existing urban forest plantation is unable to sequestrate or offset the carbon dioxide that is emitted through the transportation sector. Consequently, open spaces like riverbanks and any other public lands, in which urban forests could be developed has to be planned for the green infrastructure and plantation of the multipurpose trees. The distinct values of forests in and around urban areas have to be recognized in the specific policies and plans for the sustainable management of urban and peri-urban forests to meet the adverse impact of global climate change. In addition, this study provides insights for decision-makers to better understand the role of urban forests and make sustainable management plans for urban forests in the cities like in Kathmandu Valley.

Delimiting ecological space scientifically and making reasonable predictions of the spatial-temporal trend of changes in the dominant ecosystem service functions (ESFs) are the basis of constructing an ecological protection pattern of territorial space, which has important theoretical significance and application value. At present, most research on the identification, functional partitioning and pattern reconstruction of ecological space refers to the current ESFs and their structural information, which ignores the spatial-temporal dynamic nature of the comprehensive and dominant ESFs, and does not seriously consider the change simulation in the dominant ESFs of the future ecological space. This affects the rationality of constructing an ecological space protection pattern to some extent. In this study, we propose an ecological space delimitation method based on the dynamic change characteristics of the ESFs, realize the identification of the ecological space range in Qionglai city and solve the problem of ignoring the spatial-temporal changes of ESFs in current research. On this basis, we also apply the Markov-CA model to integrate the spatial-temporal change characteristics of the dominant ESFs, successfully realize the simulation of the spatial-temporal changes in the dominant ESFs in Qionglai city’s ecological space in 2025, find a suitable method for simulating ecological spatial-temporal changes and also provide a basis for constructing a reasonable ecological space protection pattern. This study finds that the comprehensive quantity of ESF and its annual rate of change in Qionglai city show obvious dynamics, which confirms the necessity of considering the dynamic characteristics of ESFs when identifying ecological space. The areas of ecological space in Qionglai city represent 98307 ha by using the ecological space identification method proposed in this study, which is consistent with the ecological spatial distribution in the local ecological civilization construction plan. This confirms the reliability of the ecological space identification method based on the dynamic characteristics of the ESFs. The results also show that the dominant ESFs in Qionglai city represented strong non-stationary characteristics during 2003-2019, which showed that we should fully consider the influence of the dynamics in the dominant ESFs on the future ESF pattern during the process of constructing the ecological spatial protection pattern. The Markov-CA model realized the simulation of spatial-temporal changes in the dominant ESFs with a high precision Kappa coefficient of above 0.95, which illustrated the feasibility of using this model to simulate the future dominant ESF spatial pattern. The simulation results showed that the dominant ESFs in Qionglai will still undergo mutual conversions during 2019-2025 due to the effect of the their non-stationary nature. The ecological space will still maintain the three dominant ESFs of primary product production, climate regulation and hydrological regulation in 2025, but their areas will change to 32793 ha, 52490 ha and 13024 ha, respectively. This study can serve as a scientific reference for the delimitation of the ecological conservation redline, ecological function regionalization and the construction of an ecological spatial protection pattern.

Abstract: By studying the structural characteristics and carbon storage of the mangrove island ecosystem in the 
Beibu Gulf, this study provides a scientific basis for mangrove ecological compensation in the coastal areas of 
Guangxi, South China Sea. On the basis of the unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing images and a sample plot 
survey, the object-oriented multi-scale segmentation algorithm is used to extract the mangrove community type information, and one-way analysis of variance is conducted to analyse the structural characteristics of the mangrove 
community. The carbon storage and carbon density of different mangrove ecosystems were obtained based on the 
allometric growth equation of mangrove plants. The analysis yielded four main results. (1) The island group covers 
about 27.10 ha, 41.32% (11.20 ha) of which represents mangrove areas. The mangrove forest is widely distributed 
in the tidal flats around the islands. (2) The main mangrove types were Aegiceras corniculatum, Kandelia obovata + 
Aegiceras corniculatum, Avicennia marina + Aegiceras corniculatum and Avicennia marina communities. (3) 
Amongst the mangrove plants, Avicennia marina had the highest biomass (18.52 kg plant–1), followed by Kandelia 
obovata (7.84 kg plant–1) and Aegiceras corniculatum (3.85 kg plant–1). (4) The mangrove carbon density difference 
was significant. Kandelia obovata had the highest carbon density (148.03 t ha–1), followed by Avicennia marina
(104.79 t ha–1) and Aegiceras corniculatum (99.24 t ha–1). The carbon storage of the mangrove island ecosystem 
was 1194.70 t, which was higher than in other areas with the same latitude. The carbon sequestration capacity of 
the mangrove was relatively strong.

Ecological spatial governance is crucial for modernizing China's governance system and achieving the Beautiful China vision. This study develops an analytical framework to examine its mechanisms and pathways. Key findings include: (1) Eco-environmental governance modernization exhibits a spatial shift, restructuring rights, patterns, processes, and services, supporting ecological governance and the Beautiful China strategy. (2) A "conflict-coordination-symbiosis" framework establishes a holistic governance system, balancing spatial-element coordination, structure-function synergy, and value-efficiency integration. (3) Governance is implemented through socio-ecological integration, multi-objective synergy, and stakeholder negotiation, enhancing Beautiful China mechanisms. (4) Cross-tier operational mechanisms enable improved spatial planning, land-use regulation, and ecological restoration, facilitating the Beautiful China goal.

[Objectives] Geographic Knowledge Graph (GeoKG) employs knowledge graph techniques to represent geographic knowledge as a computer-interpretable, reusable, and inferable knowledge network. However, due to the sparsity of geographic information distribution and outdated updates, GeoKGs are often incomplete, which restricts their breadth and depth of application. Geographic knowledge graph completion techniques are needed to address this incompleteness. Nevertheless, existing knowledge graph completion methods fail to fully account for the semantic information within GeoKGs and the distance-decaying effect governing interactions among geographic entities, resulting in an embedding space that inadequately captures the true distribution of geographic entities and relations, thereby limiting completion performance. [Methods] To address this issue, this study proposes a Distance-Decaying Effect-Aware Geographic Knowledge Graph Completion method (DDGKGC). The method first captures semantic information and distance-related features between entities and relations through a semantic information aggregation module and a distance-decaying effect-aware module. Then, a dual-attention mechanism-based representation learning module adaptively learns neighborhood information of entities and relations to derive their embeddings. Finally, the ConvE scoring function is used for prediction, and the results are applied to complete the GeoKGs. [Results] To comprehensively evaluate model performance,this study conducts comparative experiments, ablation studies, and multi-dimensional validation analyses on the self-constructed datasets Multi-Geo, CityDirection, and CountyDistance, as well as the public dataset Countries-S3. Experimental results demonstrate that DDGKGC achieves outstanding performance across multiple metrics including MRR, Hits@1, Hits@3, and Hits@10. Particularly in terms of MRR, which comprehensively reflects model performance, DDGKGC outperforms the baseline methods by 4%, 3.1%, 1.8%, and 5.2% on the four datasets, respectively. Moreover, through multi-dimensional validation and analysis, it is proven that DDGKGC can more effectively model the spatial and semantic relationships among geographic entities, thereby enhancing the accuracy and geographic plausibility of completion results. [Conclusions] The results demonstrate that the proposed method not only effectively enhances the performance of the geographic knowledge graph completion task but also exhibits strong generalization capability and application potential. Furthermore, it provides reliable support for the advanced application of GeoKGs.

As global ecological risks intensify, environmental upgrading has emerged as a critical issue in global value chains (GVCs) studies. Existing research analyzed the mechanisms and pathways through which economic actors adopt environmental governance across various stages of GVCs, demonstrating how environmental value can be converted into economic benefits. By reviewing the origin and research progress of environmental upgrading in GVCs, this study systematically analyzed its driving mechanisms, practical approaches, governance structures, and outcome of impacts. Additionally, it explored the spatial and regional characteristics associated with environmental upgrading in GVCs. The findings reveal that: 1) The internal driver of environmental upgrading in GVCs is linked to the green strategic decisions of enterprises, while the external driver arises from the environmental regulations or social supervision by non-firm actors, with the two being mutually transformative. 2) The strategies for environmental upgrading in GVCs, categorized and elaborated in relation to the process of economic upgrading, broaden the concept of greening and provide a more extensive array of strategies and measures. 3) The governance structures of environmental upgrading in GVCs comprise three types, including top-down vertical, bottom-up vertical, and horizontal governance, revealing the rules of interaction and power dynamics among different actors. 4) The environmental upgrading in GVCs exerts differential impacts on actors and their regions across environmental, economic, and social dimensions, which may reveal the inherent inequality issues in the process. 5) The environmental upgrading in GVCs exhibits distinct spatial characteristics, reflecting multi-scale spatial interactions and regional disparities. While research in China remains in its nascent stage, future studies should integrate global perspectives and local experiences to analyze environmental upgrading mechanisms across global, national, and local scales, and to rethink the relationship between environment and economy.

The cultivation of high-quality farmers and the protection and utilization of black soil are important starting points for the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas in Northeast China. Based on the "triple helix" theory and an analysis of high-quality farmer cultivation models alongside black soil protection practices, this paper examines the roles, logical relationships, and synergistic mechanisms linking comprehensive rural revitalization, farmer training, and soil conservation in Northeast China. Through typical case studies, it further elucidates the coordination mechanisms and sustainable pathways for integrating these elements within the rural revitalization process, proposing systematic strategies for promoting holistic rural development. The research reveals that comprehensive rural revitalization, high-quality farmer cultivation, and black soil protection form an integrated "field-subject-resource" governance model. In this model, rural revitalization serves as the foundational support, farmer cultivation provides the talent input, and black soil utilization acts as the resource base. The synergy of these elements translates their respective advantages into effective governance outcomes. The cultivation of high-quality farmers and protection and utilization of black soil are gradually adapting and positively influencing each other in the fields of rural industrial development, ecological protection, talent cultivation, organization construction and culture shaping. Building on the established synergy mechanism, further progress can be achieved through rural industrial innovation, coordinated ecological governance, optimized talent cultivation, organizational restructuring, and cultural preservation. Policy design and implementation should also be adapted according to the stage of rural revitalization to enhance synergistic efficiency.

Socio-spatial differentiation refers to the spatial distribution disparities among social groups with different attributes. Current research mainly focuses on intra-urban residential differentiation and rarely studies the social space at the regional scale, especially in integrated areas. Taking the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) integrated region as the study area and utilizing multi-dimensional, high-precision population attribute data from the Baidu Huiyan big data platform, this study analyzes the structure, characteristics, and mechanisms of socio-spatial differentiation within the region. The findings reveal that: (1) Based on key indicators such as spatial location, resident age, education level, income, and consumption capacity, the YRD can be divided into five distinct social areas. (2) These different social areas form a multi-nested "core-periphery" structure within the YRD, with significant socio-spatial differentiation observed across regions, between provinces, among cities, between urban and rural areas, and within cities. (3) The integration process has failed to promote a balanced distribution of social groups within the region; the socio-spatial differentiation in the YRD is the result of the combined effects of policy orientation, market mechanisms, and social forces. (4) Under the combined effects of endogenous factors, such as disparities in regional economic development levels, and exogenous factors, such as the migration of populations with different skill sets to different types of areas, there is a potential for intensified group differentiation and spatial disparities within the integrated YRD. To promote the balanced development of regional population and resources, it is necessary to explore some measures to achieve cross-regional resource integration and fair allocation, promote the equalization of high-quality public services and residents' living standards, and ultimately reach the goal of high-quality development of social space integration in the YRD.

Realizing the value of grassland resource assets is a critical initiative to harmonize ecological conservation with economic development, fostering sustainable coexistence between humans and grasslands. As an advanced productive force aligned with the future-oriented protection and utilization of grassland resources, new quality productive forces provide essential theoretical and practical foundations for this process. This study employs literature analysis, inductive reasoning, and case study methodologies to systematically elucidate the fundamental logic, operational mechanisms, and key pathways through which new quality productive forces empower the value realization of grassland resource assets. The findings demonstrate that: (1) The three core components of new quality productive forces—new technologies, new factors, and new industries—deliver scientific impetus, diversified strategies, and sustainable safeguards for value realization. (2) Practical challenges in this process are characterized by a tripartite dilemma: low technological conversion rates and gaps in cutting-edge technologies, insufficient participation of new-type factors and barriers to factor integration, and outdated industrial structures with low production efficiency. (3) Critical implementation pathways include: building specialized research teams, addressing technological deficiencies, and establishing industry-academia collaboration platforms; integrating production factors and developing multi-dimensional value systems; modernizing industrial structures, transforming production modes, and optimizing organizational management. This research provides both theoretical guidance and practical frameworks for the scientific management and value realization of grassland resource assets, contributing to the synergistic advancement of ecological civilization construction and socio-economic prosperity in pastoral regions.

Assessing the effectiveness of subsidies, supervision, and their combined instrument is critical for optimizing grassland eco-compensation policies. However, existing studies face methodological constraints in disentangling these three instruments due to contextual limitations. Leveraging the unique identity of grassland transfer-in herders, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment using field survey data from 885 herders in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. We employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to isolate the independent and synergistic effects of subsidies and supervision on grassland use pressure. Attempts are made to rigorously disentangle causal relationships of policy effects within complex social-ecological systems. Key findings reveal that: Firstly, subsidy instrument reduces grassland use pressure by 2.5299 sheep units per hm², equivalent to a 77.13% decrease in overgrazing severity. Secondly, supervision instrument decreases grassland use pressure by 1.8866 sheep units per hm², reducing overgrazing degree by 60.28%. Thirdly, synergistic effects lower grassland use pressure by 2.1791 sheep units per hm², diminishing overgrazing degree by 66.44%. These results demonstrate that economic incentives outperform supervision constraints, while synergistic effects exceed supervision instrument but remain weaker than subsidy instrument. Finally, the effects of subsidies, supervision and synergy on grassland use pressure reduction are more significant in small grassland scale herders, and the effect decreases in the order of synergy, subsidies and supervision. With different livelihood strategies, subsidies, supervision and synergy are all conducive to grassland use pressure, but synergy and supervision are more effective in non-grazing employment herders, while subsidies have little difference in grassland use pressure between the two groups. Future efforts should respect the phased law of policy implementation, enhance subsidy precision, improve supervision mechanisms and tools, and foster synergistic linkage between subsidies and supervision to achieve policy synergy.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 emphasize the win-win of enhancing agricultural output and promoting the sustainable development of grasslands, propelling research on the impact of agricultural land expansion on grassland systems into a new phase. This article reviews the relevant research trajectory and constructs a conceptual framework for the displacement processes and effects of agricultural and grassland systems within a region. On this basis, it organizes the displacement relationships between agricultural land and grassland systems under different scenarios, analyzes the displacement pathways that achieve a win-win situation for both production and ecology, and summarizes existing win-win models. It also explores the challenges and pathways for future model upgrades. The study finds that, from the perspective of the impact of agricultural land expansion on grassland systems, the entire agricultural system structure includes three subsystems—terrain, plants, and animals—and two fundamental interfaces connecting these subsystems. When the free potential energy of the agricultural land system accumulates to a certain extent, expansion behavior occurs. This leads to geographical spatial displacement with the grassland system and generates a series of impact effects on each subsystem and connecting interface: (1) When agricultural land undergoes inappropriate expansion, its systemic relationship with grassland becomes destructive, characterized by competition and annexation. This is primarily manifested as ecological niche deviation and over-expansion, leading to significant negative impacts. (2) When the expansion parameter of agricultural land is appropriately set, a relationship characterized by differentiation, catalysis, and multi-stability emerges between the agricultural and grassland systems. This leads to complementary spatial functions and matched potential energy, which drives displacement coupling and ultimately achieves a win-win outcome. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the global expansion of agricultural land has been continuing. Most countries have recognized the effects of system displacement and have successively introduced policies and legislation to achieve positive effects and avoid or reverse negative effects. At this stage, some countries have developed coupled win-win models, including mixed cropping, integrated crop and livestock systems, but these models face issues such as small scale, few participants, and limited content, remaining in the early stages of development. Reaching a mature stage still presents practical challenges in policy and management, technology and application, resources and security, and coupling and practice. The future goal is to construct a multi-dimensional, multi-scale, multi-model, and multi-agent coupled grassland-agricultural land displacement system, achieving a global win-win scenario. This can be realized through breakthroughs in policy control, spatial collaboration, technology upgrade/sharing, and multi-stakeholder cooperation, all guided by system coupling theory.

In arid and semi-arid pastoral areas, pastoralism is the most sustainable agro-food system. However, the current grassland degradation caused by overgrazing and climate change has threatened livestock production and herders' livelihood. Exploring the impact and mechanism of land titling on the technical efficiency (TE) of herders can help curb grassland degradation and improve herder livelihoods with institutional arrangements. Based on three periods of panel data of 2014, 2017 and 2020 from field interviews with 299 herder households collected in five sumus and towns in Urad Middle Banner, Inner Mongolia, this study used Stochastic Frontier Analysis to examine the impact of the new round of grassland titling on TE, and explored the impact mechanism using Binary Choice Model and Two-way Fixed Effects Model. The TE analysis showed that titling was associated with higher technical efficiency, as shown by a 0.367 higher mean TE value for confirmed herders compared to unconfirmed ones. The influencing mechanism mainly manifested as direct incentive effect and grassland transfer effect, while the labor migration effect was not significant, i.e., grassland titling could improve TE by motivating herders to adopt more proactive attitudes towards utilizing and transferring grasslands rather than by promoting them to work outside. The study was expected to extend the application of land property rights theory to grassland resource management, thereby providing a theoretical basis for promoting grassland titling in other pastoral areas and a practical reference for enhancing herder efficiency and conserving natural capital through improved institutional arrangements.

Located in inland Northwest China, the Hexi region has a typical arid and semi-arid climate and serves as a vital node in the Belt and Road Initiative. In recent years, global changes and human activities had impacted the sustainable development of both the regional ecosystem and the socio-economy. Grasslands play an important role in sustaining socio-economic development and ecological balance in arid and semi-arid zones, which are essential for providing critical ecosystem services such as water and soil conservation, windbreak and sand fixation, and biodiversity conservation. Grassland coverage serves as a key indicator of regional ecological health. Investigating the spatiotemporal patterns and response mechanisms of grassland coverage in the Hexi region holds significant importance for maintaining ecological balance and regulating regional climate. This study utilized MODIS NDVI time-series data and meteorological records from 2001 to 2022 to conduct multi-scale spatiotemporal analyses of grassland coverage dynamics and their climatic responses. An XGBoost model integrated with CMIP6 dataset was further employed to simulate grassland coverage trends from 2023 to 2050 under different scenarios in the Hexi region. The results showed that: (1) Grassland coverage in the study area showed an overall increasing trend with stable fluctuations. The spatial distribution of grassland coverage exhibited distinct spatial heterogeneity, presenting a pattern of "higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest". Approximately 57.22% of grasslands demonstrated significant improvement, though the sustainability of this trend remains uncertain. (2) Grassland coverage responded differentially to climatic factors, with precipitation showing the highest correlation coefficient. Grasslands in the northwest part of the region were notably influenced by soil moisture. Climate change (CC) and human activities (HA) contributed 27.88% and 72.12% to coverage changes, respectively, indicating HA as the dominant driver. (3) By 2050, annual average grassland coverage is projected to increase under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios but decrease under SSP1-1.9. The SSP2-4.5 scenario is deemed more conducive to grassland development in the Hexi region. These findings provide a scientific basis for ecological restoration and sustainable development in this region. Future research should integrate high-resolution land use data with long-term ecological monitoring to explore the complex response of grassland ecosystems to climate change and human activities. Furthermore, comprehensive assessments of grassland ecosystem services and values should be strengthened. Coupled with long-term field surveys and monitoring in vegetation-sparse and degraded areas, this work will provide critical decision-making support for ecological management and the sustainable use of resources in the Hexi region. The results also help us to scientifically understand the response and feedback between vegetation changes and global change in various natural and human environments.

China's Digital Village Strategy is entering a new phase of comprehensive acceleration. Digital technologies are now deeply integrated into all facets of pastoral systems, from livestock development and herdsmen production to livelihoods and the overall transformation of pastoral areas. Against the macro-backdrop of grassland livestock reduction policies, this paper develops a game payoff matrix from the dual-game perspective of government-herdsmen interactions. This approach facilitates a mathematical analysis of the mechanisms through which digital technology enhances the quality of herd reduction practices. Simultaneously, OLS regression combined with Generalized Propensity Score Matching (GPSM) is applied to survey data from herders in the Ili region of Xinjiang. These methods empirically examine the mechanisms through which digital technology affects livestock reduction quality. The baseline regression results indicate that digital technologies significantly improve the quality of livestock reduction. This improvement is manifested in high efficiency, environmental friendliness, rational regulation, and effective supervision. The GPSM estimation results demonstrate a significant positive effect of digital technology usage intensity on livestock reduction quality, revealing an increasing marginal benefit trend. Mechanism analysis reveals that emotional social networks play a mediating role in the pathway through which digital technologies affect the quality of livestock reduction, while functional social networks do not exhibit a significant influence. Local governments should strengthen cooperative and mutually beneficial relations with herdsmen, thereby promoting the deeper integration and sustainable development of digital technologies in the livestock sector.

Chinese modernization represents a new path to modernity, and natural resources serve as a crucial foundation and resource guarantee for its achievement. To align with the development demands of the New Era, it is imperative to analyze the scientific cognition and novel propositions within natural resource research, while establishing a comprehensive framework encompassing both theoretical and applied research in the context of Chinese modernization. Based on the new development paradigm, this article advances a fresh academic understanding of natural resources. Firstly, it profoundly introduces the concept of a life community between humans and nature, grounded in the perspective of intersubjectivity and a mutually beneficial relationship. Building upon this foundation, the article puts forward philosophical, technical, and civilizational propositions for the study of natural resources in China, corresponding respectively to the ontological foundation and theoretical system construction of China's view of natural resources, the innovative conversion mechanism of natural resource value in the digital intelligence era, and the theoretical mechanism for natural resources to participate in the construction of future civilizational forms. Meanwhile, the article delves into five practical innovations concerning the object identification, value transformation, urban-rural coordination, governance innovation and knowledge integration. It focuses on aspects such as systematically conduct multi-dimensional value assessments of natural resources; promote the digital and intelligent upgrading of the integration of natural resources, assets, capital, and funds; adhere to the effective allocation and orderly flow of natural resource elements between urban and rural areas; promote cross-regional governance of natural resources based on composite spatial relationships; break through the boundaries of knowledge tools and establish a composite knowledge system. This article aims to provide both academic support and practical guidance for the conservation and sustainable development of natural resources.

New-quality productivity is the fundamental driving force for achieving high-quality development. Taking research findings of characteristic agriculture in Southeastern Fujian and soil and water conservation in Changting of Western Fujian as examples, scientific theory and practical path for sustainable utilization of subtropical agricultural resources in China are explored from the perspective of new-quality productivity. It is considered that the development of characteristic agriculture and ecological conservation are the research theme of sustainable utilization of agricultural resource in subtropical zones, it must be anchored in the development of new-quality productivity, which must be centered around innovation. Innovation is manifested in innovative management concepts and advanced technological means, which require the support of scientific theories and basic research. However, innovation alone cannot become new-quality productivity, it is necessary to demonstrate a qualitative improvement in term of optimizing production efficiency, product quality, and resource sustainability. The reasons for the disconnect between "new" and "quality" in developing new-quality productivity are analyzed and an effective path to connect "new" and "quality" is proposed through the examples, emphasizing that this is an important mission for resource scientists at present.

Based on an analysis of 1106 central governmental policy texts 1949-2025), this paper identifies five stages in the evolution of urban regeneration policies in China: 1949-1978: urban environmental remediation; 1979-1993: urban housing compensation; 1994-2011: market-driven incremental expansion; 2012-2019: stock regeneration for high-quality development; and 2020-present: comprehensive regeneration actions. This paper systematically examines characteristics and evolutionary logic of each stage, using a four-dimensional framework: goal orientation, policy focus, policy carrier, and institutional support. This paper reveals five major trends: generalization (shift to a proactive and coordinated urban strategy), inclusiveness (from pursuing pure economic objectives to embracing social benefits and public value), refinement (from large-scale redevelopment to micro-level participatory planning), integration (combining various aims including enhancing urban competitiveness, industrial upgrades and heritage protection) and sustainability (more legally robust and systematical policy instruments). Current policies, however, face challenges of ambiguous government-market-society relations, imperfect legal frameworks, lack of interest coordination mechanisms and overemphasis on economic gains over socio-cultural values. To foster sustainable urban regeneration, this paper puts forward three key recommendations: strengthening national legal frameworks, optimizing multi-stakeholder collaboration, and meticulously balancing economic benefits with socio-cultural values. Besides, this paper concludes that the future path of urban regeneration will be defined by a synergy of micro-renewal, smart, and low-carbon strategies, underpinned by the people-centered philosophy of "co-creation, co-governance, and co-sharing".

Climate change can influence both energy supply and demand. As a critical strategic resource reserve for China, the Tibetan Plateau lacks comprehensive research on the future alignment of electricity supply and demand from wind and solar (W&S) energy systems under climate change scenarios. This study develops a supply-demand matching (SDM) index using outputs from 12 global climate models and evaluates the independent and combined effects of climate change on supply, demand, and changes in SDM (∆SDM) through controlled experiments. The results indicate that under the SSP2-4.5 scenario, W&S system supply, driven by shifts in climate mean states, shows a declining trend. For wind energy systems, ∆SDM decreases by an average of -2.95%, driven by the combined effects of supply and demand changes. Conversely, for solar energy systems, ∆SDM increases by an average of 2.02%, primarily due to a reduction in future heating demand, which offsets the decline in solar energy supply and enhances the supply-demand matching of solar energy systems. This study provides a scientific foundation for the Tibetan Plateau's energy sector to adapt effectively to climate change.

[Significance] Urban digital twin models simulate comprehensive urban scenes by digitally mapping physical entities through real-time data integration. These models serve as visual, real-time representations of urban dynamics within smart cities, incorporating technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), spatial information systems, artificial intelligence, and others. Building on the Physical-Social-Information (PSI) three-dimensional framework, this paper reviews the current research progress of urban digital twin models and innovatively proposes a four-dimensional coupling framework: Physical-Social-Information-Time (PSIT). [Progress] The main research findings are as follows: (1) Since the introduction of digital twin technology into urban research in 2017, related literature has grown rapidly, with theoretical foundations and functional design frameworks gradually maturing. Urban digital twin models have initially been developed along three dimensions, PSI, including the digital mapping of geographic entities, spatial analysis of human activities, and the fusion and mining of geographic big data. (2) To more accurately reflect the real urban operations, current models require breakthroughs in data, technology, and algorithms. The PSI framework tends to overemphasize spatial features while oversimplifying the temporal dimension, lacking a representation of the spatiotemporal differentiation inherent in urban systems. (3) Recognizing the critical role of spatiotemporal coupling in urban modeling, this paper elevates time from a background variable to an independent dimension. This is based on the unidirectional nature of time, the temporal constraints on social behavior, the allometric time scales of urban element evolution, and the time-dependent mechanisms behind system phase transitions. Accordingly, the PSIT four-dimensional coupling framework is proposed to enhance the logic of urban system evolution and advance the theoretical paradigm of urban digital twin modeling. The CitySPS platform is presented as a case study for detailed illustration. [Prospect] The PSIT four-dimensional coupling framework offers the potential for more precise simulation and accurate prediction in digital urban spaces, representing a promising direction for future "intelligent" urban governance.

[Objectives] To systematically investigate the key pathways and application models for leveraging intelligent technologies in urban-rural integrated planning. It seeks to explore potential responses to the complex challenges arising from China's strategic developmental shift towards the renewal and quality enhancement of its existing urban and rural stock. In this new era, traditional planning methodologies, which often rely on static data and experience-driven decision-making, face significant limitations in addressing the intricate stakeholder relationships, intertwined land uses, and dynamic nature of established built environments. This review, therefore, explores how a more intelligent, data-informed approach could better support contemporary planning objectives. [Discussion] Addressing challenges such as the precise identification of multi-source features, the issue of persistent data silos, and the need for in-depth cognition of complex human-environment relationships, this paper reviews and proposes a closed-loop "Perception-Fusion-Cognition-Planning" conceptual framework. This framework is intended to guide the application of intelligent digitalization across the planning lifecycle. It begins with Intelligent Perception, which suggests integrating multi-modal data from sources like high-altitude cameras and drones with AI-driven algorithms for the automated semantic analysis and dynamic monitoring of urban-rural elements. This is followed by Spatio-temporal Data Fusion, which focuses on standardizing and integrating these heterogeneous data streams onto a unified baseline, creating a consistent and reliable digital foundation for analysis. The third stage, Cognition, employs knowledge graph technology to transform the integrated data into deep, systemic insights by explicitly modeling the implicit relationships between spatial entities, socio-economic factors, and regulatory policies. Finally, the Planning and Governance stage describes how an integrated enabling platform can translate these insights into actionable decision support, facilitating scenario analysis and collaborative workflows. A case study focused on farmland protection in Zengcheng District, Guangzhou, is presented to illustrate the potential and feasibility of this integrated technological pathway. The case demonstrates how the framework can be applied to achieve end-to-end governance, from automated change detection to policy-based reasoning and targeted enforcement. [Prospect] This systematic framework offers a potential conceptual approach for addressing the multifaceted challenges inherent in the intelligent planning for urban-rural integration. It is hoped that this work can help facilitate a paradigm shift in planning from traditional, experience-driven methods toward modern, data-informed "platform-based governance," characterized by more dynamic, evidence-based, and collaborative processes. By providing both theoretical references and practical guidance, this review aims to contribute to the ongoing efforts to modernize spatial governance capabilities, thereby supporting the overarching goals of sustainable and high-quality integrated development in China.

[Background] In recent years, confronted with emerging phenomena and new challenges in cartographic practice, an increasing number of scholars have called for a critical reassessment of existing paradigms in cartography, aiming to address both the disciplinary challenges and societal demands arising from technological transformations. [Objectives and Methods] Following a research approach that integrates critical inheritance and innovative transcendence, this study employs theoretical deduction to first review and synthesize existing paradigms in cartography. It then analyzes the predicaments encountered during the structural transformation of mapping practices and, finally, proposes a new paradigm for the discipline. [Results] Traditional cartographic research tends to equate “maps” with practices defined by specific professional norms, thereby endowing cartography with distinct characteristics of professional map-making in its knowledge sources, focal concerns, and practical pathways, ultimately forming what may be termed the professional map-making paradigm. However, this paradigm increasingly reveals two prominent dilemmas. On the one hand, the professional map-making paradigm struggles to capture the complexity and fluidity of maps as they are embedded in everyday social life, often resulting in theoretical lag and explanatory failure when addressing new forms of cartographic practices and their associated meaning-making mechanisms. On the other hand, the paradigm tends to operate within a closed cycle of internal knowledge reproduction, lacking substantial theoretical innovation and failing to cultivate problem-oriented thinking, thereby weakening its capacity to guide and regulate cartographical practice. In response, this study, grounded in a networked and relational understanding of the world, proposes a social practice paradigm for cartography. This paradigm conceptualizes maps as social practices embedded within social networks and linked to social actors, emphasizing the unique meanings and social values that maps generate in connecting individuals with the external world. [Conclusions] The social practice paradigm advocates for a transcendent perspective in understanding and interpreting maps, incorporates interdisciplinary integration and pluralistic methodological approaches, and promotes the coordination of local experiences with global perspectives. This paradigm not only deepens holistic understanding of mapping practices but also offers new theoretical resources and analytical frameworks for cartography to address pressing issues in contemporary digital, intelligent, and networked societies. Future research should systematically analyze the research context and theoretical foundations of cartography within the social practice paradigm. A conceptual, discursive, knowledge, theoretical, and methodological system, distinct from the professional map-making paradigm, needs to be gradually established to address the challenges faced by cartographic practice in complex and evolving contexts. The fundamental goal is to expand the boundaries of cartographic research and intellectual resources, transcending existing disciplinary categories and knowledge frameworks.

Climate change significantly affects the arid/humid processes and patterns in China, directly impacting management decisions related to adaptive agriculture and water resources management, desertification control, and spatial ecological restoration. However, current studies primarily focus on changes in arid/humid climate variables, lacking quantitative characterization of the dynamic evolution of areal systems and their nonlinear responses. Based on the data of national meteorological stations from 1961 to 2020, we systematically quantified the nonlinear response of arid/humid patterns to climate change. The results revealed that 6.98% of eco-geographical arid/humid regions underwent type shifts over the past six decades, with 4.95% transitioning toward wetter conditions. Humid and semi-arid regions expanded significantly while sub-humid and arid regions contracted significantly. In the late 1990s, trends of the humid and sub-humid region shifted. Humid region contraction in northern China was driven primarily by precipitation decline, whereas the Tibetan Plateau responded to increasing potential evapotranspiration. During the same period, the retreat rate of the arid region slowed, linked to intensified aridification in the west part of northern China and a decelerating wetting trend in northwest China, both primarily driven by precipitation trends. Our study reveals the nonlinear response of the arid/humid patterns under climate change, providing a scientific basis for the improvement of regional climate resilience.

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from crop production is essential for mitigating climate change and achieving sustainable agricultural development. Using micro-level data from the Fixed Observation Rural Survey (FORS) spanning 1993-2020 and the China Rural Development Survey (CRDS), we calculate the agricultural total factor productivity (ATFP) and GHG emission intensity from crop production among farmers based on the Cobb-Douglas production function and life cycle assessment, respectively. A two-way fixed effects model was employed to examine their relationship. The results show that ATFP has a rebound effect on GHG emission intensity under current technological and managerial conditions, with the optimal ATFP level below the sample mean. This suggests that continuous improvements in ATFP may initially reduce but eventually increase emission intensity. These findings remain robust across a series of tests. Moderating effect analysis indicated that higher education levels, per capita income, and labor input significantly strengthened the impact of ATFP on emission intensity. Heterogeneity across nine agricultural zones also indicates consistent rebound effects but with varying turning points. The results suggest that policies should focus on farmer education and training, optimize the agricultural planting structure, and adopt region-specific mitigation strategies to enhance ATFP while avoiding rebound effects in GHG emission intensity.

Rural construction, encompassing infrastructure, public services, and human settlement improvement, serves as a critical pathway to harmonize human-environment relationships in rural areas and a pivotal endeavor for advancing the comprehensive rural revitalization strategy. Integrated geographical research on rural construction offers a new opportunity for geography to serve national strategies. Despite substantial investments in rural construction in China, persistent gaps and underdeveloped regions remain, necessitating deeper theoretical and practical research to address these challenges. This study, based on a systematic review of the progress in rural construction research, elucidates the scientific connotations and practical requirements of rural construction from a geographical perspective. It further outlines the key areas for geographical research and innovative practical pathways to advance rural construction in the new era. Rural construction is a comprehensive, systematic undertaking that builds on current conditions while being geared toward the future. Against the backdrop of climate change, population mobility, and prominent sustainability challenges, it exhibits multidimensional, multilevel, and differentiated demands. In terms of the research, it is imperative to integrate interdisciplinary knowledge and construct a multi-objective, multilevel, and multi-stakeholder collaborative framework to distill differentiated regional models and optimization strategies based on comprehensive effects, implementation mechanisms, and problem diagnosis. From the perspective of practice, it is essential to actively explore more effective mechanisms for supply-demand matching, planning guidance, funding mobilization, subsequent operation and maintenance, and performance evaluation, thereby promoting a more inclusive, equitable, efficient, and sustainable approach to rural construction that effectively contributes to comprehensive rural revitalization.