The Recovery of China's Industrial Parks in the First Wave of COVID-19.

Industrial parks are functional urban areas that carry the capacity to support highly concentrated production activities. The robustness and anti-interference ability of these areas are of great importance to maintaining economic vitality of a country. Focusing on the rate of production recovery (RPR), this paper examines the recovery of 436 major industrial parks in mainland China during the first wave of COVID-19. Leveraging spatio-temporal big data, we measured 14 attributes pertaining to industrial parks, covering four categories, namely spatial location, central city, park development, and public service. We focused on the spatial association and heterogeneity of the recovery patterns and identified the factors that truly affected the recovery of industrial parks with quantitative evaluation of their effects. The results reveal that: (1) RPR of industrial parks are significantly spatially clustered, with an obvious "cold spot" in the early outbreak area of Hubei Province and a prominent "center-periphery" pattern in developed areas, which is highly correlated with the spread of the epidemic. (2) The mechanisms driving the resumption of industrial parks are complex and versatile. All four categories in the variable matrix are related to RPR, including up to eight effective influencing factors. The effect of influencing factors is spatially heterogeneous, and its intensity varies significantly across regions. What is more interesting is that some impact factors show positive effects in some industrial parks while inhibiting the recovery in others. On the basis of the discussion of those findings with practical experiences, the planning and construction strategies of industrial park are suggested to mitigate the impact of similar external shocks.

Analysis of critical land degradation and development processes and their driving mechanism in the Heihe River Basin.

In arid regions, land development and degradation (LDD) is sustained by the undesirable land development, human production and living, and climate change. Therefore, the understanding of LDD processes and their driving mechanism in the arid or semi-arid regions is significant to guarantee the sustainable development of ecological environment. This study explored the critical LDD processes in the Heihe River Basin (HRB) during 1990-2010 with the spatio-temporal evaluation of critical land use dynamics and its land quality changing trends. Then, the driving mechanism of cultivated land development process, grassland degradation process and water resource change process were analyzed by a simultaneous equations model which took the interaction of three processes into account. The results showed that the mutual transfers of cultivated land were primarily gathered in the middle reaches from 1990 to 2010. Its area grew by 13.5% and the average dynamic degree remained at 0.61%. The transfers between grassland and cultivated land, unused land were more remarkable, which led to the decline of grassland quality and even grassland degradation. Water area maintained a dynamic balance with almost unchanged area, but its dynamic trend was initially increasing and then decreasing. However, the average degradation of land quality in the whole study area is continuously alleviated. These changes were mainly due to the interaction of the LDD processes above, as well as socio-economic and climate change. Among them，agricultural research investments could restrain the unordered expansion of cultivated land resource for a relatively short period of time. Meanwhile, the variable of whether it is the main grain producing county is the main driver of grassland and water resource degradation in this region. These conclusions will provide scientific references for ecological land restoration and land quality improvement in the HRB.

New amphoteric flocculant containing beta-cyclodextrin, synthesis, characterization and decolorization properties.

To react with the cationic monomer, N-trimethylaminoethylmethacrylate chloride (TMAEMC), a beta-CD derivative carrying vinyl carboxylic acid groups (beta-CD-MAH) was designed and synthesized via esterfying reaction between beta-CD and maleic anhydride (MAH). Whereafter, a water-soluble amphoteric flocculant, the copolymer of TMAEMC and beta-CD-MAH (beta-CD-MAH-TMAEMC) has been synthesized by means of free radical copolymerization using the ammonium persulfate (APS) and sodium bisulfite (SBS) redox system as the initiator. The copolymer structure was demonstrated by FT-IR, (1)H NMR, SEM characterizations. Its excellent flocculated decolorization properties were evaluated with Acid Light Yellow 2G solutions using a jar test method. With the mass ratio of 1/10 (w/w) between the flocculant and dye, and at pH 4 and 20 degrees C of the initial dye solution, the maximum color removal reached. The charge neutralization played a dominant role during the flocculated decolorization process, although the inclusion of dye molecules into the cavities of beta-CD well maintained in side chain of beta-CD-MAH-TMAEMC also contributed to the conglomerates and floccules.