Metacoupling of Water Transfer: The Interaction of Ecological Environment in the Middle Route of China's South-North Project.

At present, nearly half of the population of China live in water-deficient areas where water needs to be transferred from surrounding or remote water sources to meet local water demands. Although the water transfer project has alleviated the demands for water in the water-deficient areas, and brought water-supply income to water source regions, it has also posed some cross-regional negative impacts, including the changes in the original ecology within the water source, the impacts on the downstream water demands, and the risk of biological invasion in the distant water receiving areas. Therefore, it can be seen that the impact of water transfer is complicated and will be manifested in various aspects. The Middle Route of China's South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP-MR), as the world's largest cross-watershed water transfer project, exerts particularly important effects on regional sustainable development; however, it also produces complex interactions within the ecological environment itself, downstream and in the distant water receiving cities. Thus, this work attempts to apply a metacoupling analysis framework of water transfer to explore the ecological interaction of water transfer in SNWTP-MR on each system. The metacoupling framework can be divided into intracoupling, pericoupling and telecoupling. This study focuses on the analysis of the causes and effects of the intracoupling, pericoupling and telecoupling of SNWTP-MR from the perspective of ecological values and ecological risks. We found that the coupling of water transfer brings about 23 billion yuan of ecological service value to the water source annually, but also increases the internal ecological risk index by 9.31%, through the calculation of changes in land use; secondly, the power generation benefit significantly increases, and the flood control standards have shifted from once-in-20 years to once-in-a-century. However, the ecological risks are also significant, such as poor water quality, eutrophication of water resources, competition for water between industry and agriculture, deterioration of waterway shipping, and threats to biodiversity, etc. Considering only water supply, the population carrying capacity of the water resource in distant water receiving cities is increased by 16.42 million people, which enhances the value of water resources and creates a cross-regional green ecological landscape belt. Nevertheless, the biological invasion and water pollution have greatly affected the safety of water supply. It can be seen that the cross-regional water transfer does not always damage the interests of the sending system and the spillover system while benefiting the receiving system; its impacts are complex and variable. Through this paper, it is hoped to provide a reference for the analysis of the ecological compensation, resource development and allocation in SNWTP-MR by revealing the metacoupling relationship of SNWTP-MR. This paper will provide new ideas for researching the metacoupling relationship, thereby offering valuable reference for the study of the interaction generated by large-scale water transfer.

A Comparative Study of the Resilience of Urban and Rural Areas under Climate Change.

The impact of climate change in recent years has caused considerable risks to both urban and rural systems. How to mitigate the damage caused by extreme weather events has attracted much attention from countries in recent years. However, most of the previous studies on resilience focused on either urban areas or rural areas, and failed to clearly identify the difference between urban and rural resilience. In fact, the exploration of the difference between the resilience characteristics of cities and villages under climate change can help to improve the planning strategy and the allocation of resources. In this study, the indicators of resilience were firstly built through a literature review, and then a Principal Component Analysis was conducted to construct an evaluation system involving indicators such as "greenland resilience", "community age structure resilience", "traditional knowledge resilience", "infrastructure resilience" and "residents economic independence resilience". Then the analysis of Local Indicators of Spatial Association showed some resilience abilities are concentrated in either urban or rural. Binary logistic regression was performed, and the results showed urban areas have more prominent abilities in infrastructure resilience (the coefficient value is 1.339), community age structure resilience (0.694), and greenland resilience (0.3), while rural areas are more prominent in terms of the residents economic independence resilience (-0.398) and traditional knowledge resilience (-0.422). It can be seen that urban areas rely more on the resilience of the socio-economic structure, while rural areas are more dependent on their own knowledge and economic independence. This result can be used as a reference for developing strategies to improve urban and rural resilience.

Establish an assessment framework for risk and investment under climate change from the perspective of climate justice.

Under the threat of climate change, the issue of climate justice has gradually received international attention in recent years. Climate justice focuses on the unfair phenomena in various regions caused by climate change. At present, some countries are facing "double inequality," that is, the reverse and separate distribution of "natural hazard" and "social resilience" and that of "risk" and "responsible input." Therefore, this study constructed a research framework for evaluating climate justice. The framework reconstructed the indicator system and conducted verification analysis on the research issues of climate justice, including the spatial correlation between "natural hazard" and "social resilience" and that between "risk" and "responsible input," and uses the "bivariate local indicators of spatial association" method to detect the regional current situation and test the justice after government's resource investment. In this way, four-quadrant spatial characteristics were obtained (high-high, low-low, high-low, and low-high districts) to identify the areas with the characteristics of climate justice. This study used Taiwan as the research area. The results show that Taiwan currently has only 7 regions with "double inequality." Therefore, only a small part of the region has "double inequality." The results can be used as the basis for future government's resource input and the allocation of climate responsibility.

Research on the site selection of watershed public facilities as multi-use detention basin: an environmental efficiency perspective.

With the climate change and the acceleration of urbanization, urban flood disaster is becoming increasingly frequent, leading to more severe impact than in the past. The traditional disaster alleviation strategies have gradually expanded to non-engineering disaster reduction strategies. As urban public property, public facility is more available than private land, making it the preferred strategy of site selection for urban land flood diversion. However, due to the limited government finance, how to select public facilities as the multi-use detention basin to maximize the disaster reduction and external benefits is an issue that needs to be considered before planning and decision-making. This study builds an operable decision model of site selection of urban public facilities as multi-use detention basin from the perspective of environmental efficiency. The decision model analyzes the expected costs and benefits of the multi-use detention basin based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) and cross-efficiency analysis, so as to establish the optimal combination of alternative schemes of site selection. It further compares with the traditional detention basin considering only disaster reduction efficiency to summarize how to improve the strategy of selecting multi-use detention basin site within the watershed in the future. This paper uses the watershed of Dajiaxi as a case study, and finds that (I) there is a certain trade-off relationship between the optimized schemes established from the perspective of environmental efficiency and disaster reduction efficiency evaluation. The scheme with the highest disaster reduction efficiency does not necessarily increase the external benefit significantly; (II) for the inefficient schemes, the difference between the site selection schemes and the ideal efficiency value can be measured through slack variable analysis.

Research on constructing sponge city indicator and decision evaluation model with fuzzy multiple criteria method.

Cities face acute shock like hurricanes and floods, and chronic stresses such as droughts, water shortages, urban floods, and urban using water. How cities can create a development model in which the water and environment can coexist to alleviate the problem with urban water has become a common problem faced by countries or cities. Sponge city construction becomes a possible option to meet these challenges. According to the dimensions of pre-assessment, this article constructs the sponge city assessment indicator which is divided into three aspects: water ecosystem, socioeconomic system, and institutional and mechanism system; then, the degree of importance and degree of satisfaction are applied as the evaluation framework for the fuzzy multiple criteria to perform the comparison between the government officials and the public regarding the evaluation to analyze group differences. The results are that the difference in the evaluation dimensions between the officials and the public is between 0.8 and 1, but there exists difference in the degree of importance of water management and water use, and in the degree of satisfaction with water development, water efficiency, and mechanism. This result is helpful to find the problems and provide a decision basis for the further exploration. PRACTITIONER POINTS: Constructed indicators for sponge city construction, which can be used to evaluate stormwater management. Using fuzzy multiple criteria to compare officials and public can be used as a basis for decision-making in water management. Constructed three indicators of sponge city: water ecosystem, socioeconomic system, and institutional and mechanism system.

Exploring spatial patterns of farmland transactions and farmland use changes.

Strong economic incentives stimulate the conversion of farmland to non-farm uses possessing higher economic benefits, and rising land values can result in further conversions in the surrounding areas. However, previous studies focused exclusively on the analysis of attribute data, without concern for location or geographic information. Our study focuses on the application of spatial analysis method by exploring the magnitude and patterns of farmland use changes and farmland transactions in Tainan County in southwestern Taiwan. The results show that farmland use changes and transactions appear to cluster in specific locations-near urban planning areas, industrial parks, and science parks. Clustered farmland use changes indicate both excessive development of some farmland and possible protection of other farmland, while clustered farmland transactions indicate potential pressure for future conversion to non-farming uses. Overall, the spatial analyses indicate (without necessarily implying a cause-and-effect relationship) that the greater the farmland use change, the greater the number of farmland transactions. This approach to exploring the spatial patterns in and the interaction between farmland use change and farmland transactions can be applied to other regions facing increasing competition for farmland conversions and may be a useful tool for monitoring both urban expansion and increased farmland transactions. These occurrences should be closely monitored by governments to avoid excessive loss of farmland.