The Impact on the Ecosystem Services Value of the Ecological Shelter Zone Reconstruction in the Upper Reaches Basin of the Yangtze River in China.

With regional socio-economic development and increasing population, the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystem environments on the earth's surface have changed markedly. Ecological shelter zone reconstruction (ESZR) is an ecosystem restoration and conservation project, which aims to ensure the safety of the ecological environments of-regions and basins. We selected the upper reaches of the Yangtze River (from Yibin to Chongqing) as the study area and determined the connotation of ESZR. At the same time, the planning scope and construction content of the ecological barrier in this specific region have been preliminarily explored. Meanwhile, a set of related planning methods was proposed, the ecological effects of which were quantitatively assessed and confirmed through the calculation of ESVs. Compared with the conditions in 2005, the study showed that the value of the services of the whole ecosystem augmented significantly under the slope classification, increasing by 103.23%. At the same time, the land use pattern has been optimized, and the vegetation coverage has been enhanced. The ESZR can effectively improve the ecosystem service function of slope land (mainly slope > 25°) and the regional ecological environment, solve the rocky desertification of the study area and provide an effective decision in relation to supporting regional green sustainable development.

Performance evaluation of anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) for treating alkali-decrement wastewater of polyester fabrics at incremental organic loading rates.

In this study, an anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) with four compartments was employed to treat alkali-decrement wastewater of polyester fabrics under different organic loading rates. The stable operation of this reactor was achieved in 70 days at a hydraulic retention time of 36 h and mesophilic temperature of 35 ± 1 °C. It is found that the chemical oxygen demand removal and decolorization of this system can be as high as 79.0% and 87.7%, respectively. The different acidogenesis and methanogenesis in four compartments was acclimated by the variation of pH, oxidation reduction potential values and operational conditions in the spatial distribution of the first to fourth compartments of the ABR system. In addition, the dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and coenzyme F420 concentrations along the four compartments ranged from 67.8 to 185.21 µgTF/(gVSS·h) (TF: triphenyl formazan; VSS: volatile suspended solids) and 0.123 to 0.411 µmol/g, respectively. These results indicated that the ABR could separate acidogenesis and methanogenesis in longitudinal distribution and treat well the alkali-decrement wastewater.