Intelligentization-oriented development is a fast-developing trend of technological revolution. It promotes the reconstruction of the industrial system of a region and affects its overall industrial ...competitiveness. This paper sets up a variety of models featuring intelligentization level and multi-dimensional industrial competitiveness, and collects data of 28 provinces and cities in China from 2003 to 2017 to test the influence of industrial intelligentization level on the industrial competitiveness of a region. The result reveals that: 1) In China’s provincial jurisdictions, the higher the level of intelligentization is, the lower the overall level of industrial competitiveness and the lower the proportion of industry in the economic system will be. In regions where the facilities are highly intelligentialized, the production sectors tend to move to the less developed regions, and the growth effect of technological dividends is the focus. 2) Compared with the middle region and the Western region of China, the Eastern region, which is more developed with higher intelligentization level, has stronger ability in the research and development (R&D) of technologies, and the economic structure of the industry there tends to be stable, manifesting a strong growth potential.
Water supply services (WSSs) are critical to human survival and development. The Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model enables an integrated, dynamic, and visual ...assessment of ecosystem services at different scales. In addition, Geodetector is an effective tool for identifying the main driving factors of spatial heterogeneity of ecosystem services. Therefore, this article takes the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA), the most prominent strategic reserve of freshwater resources in China, as the study area and uses the InVEST model to simulate the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the supply-demand balance of WSSs and freshwater security patterns in 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2018, and explores the key driving factors of freshwater security index (FSI) with Geodetector. The total supply of WSSs in the TGRA decreased by 1.05% overall between 2005 and 2018, with the head and tail areas being low-value regions for water yield and the central part of the belly areas being high-value regions for water yield. The total demand for WSSs in the TGRA increased by 9.1%, with the tail zones and the central part of the belly zones being the high water consumption areas. In contrast, the head zones are of low water consumption. The multi-year average FSI of the TGRA is 0.12, 0.1, 0.21, and 0.16, showing an upward trend. The key ecological function areas in the TGRA are high-value FSI regions, while the tail zones in the key development areas are low-value FSI regions. Industrial water consumption significantly impacts FSI, with a multi-year average q value of 0.82. Meanwhile, the q value of industrial and domestic water consumption on FSI in 2018 increased by 43.54% and 30%, respectively, compared with 2005. This study analyzes the spatiotemporal variation of WSSs and detects the drivers in the natural-economic-social perspective and innovation in ecosystem services research. The study results can guide water resource security management in other large reservoirs or specific reservoir areas.
Rapid urbanization and land-use change cause risk in regional ecological security. It is very significance to explore the evolutionary trend of land-use change and landscape ecological risk (LER) in ...an ecologically fragile area, especially in terms of maintaining sustainable development in a regional ecological environment. We selected the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR) as the study area based on land-use and land-cover data for 2000, 2010, and 2020. The land-use classification system used here was constructed using the perspective of the production–living–ecological space (PLES). The GIS spatial-analysis technique and FRAGSTATS 4 software were used. We used the method of the land-use transfer matrix, the landscape ecological risk assessment model, the ecological contribution rate of land-use transfer, and spatial autocorrelation analysis. We performed quantitative analysis of the spatio-temporal pattern of PLES and its LER in the TGRR over the past 20 years. The results show that: (1) The area of human living space (HLS) has expanded significantly—by 1469.37 km2 (+326.66%), while the area of agricultural production space (APS) has been compressed by both the urban/rural living space (URLS) and the forestland ecological space (FES), particularly during the last 10 years; (2) The overall LER results were medium, but LER is increasing; (3) The LER in the northern area of the Yangtze River is higher than in the south. The Wanzhou district and the downstream areas had a lower LER; and (4) The transformation from agricultural production space to forestland ecological space and urban/rural living space has had a higher contribution rate to the LER compared to other events. These results can be used as a reference for land planning, sustainable development, and ecological civilization construction in ecologically fragile areas.
Poverty eradication is one of the global challenges, and land transfer provides an effective path to address farmers’ poverty; however, the effect of poverty reduction can show heterogeneity ...depending on the location, household, and head of household. This study employs the propensity value matching technique to compare the effects of the land transfer on the future alleviation of poverty among farm households, based on the vulnerability as expected poverty, using data from 4608 household tracking surveys. The findings point to the following: In general, rural land transfers can significantly lessen farm households’ VEP. In terms of regional variations, the positive effects of land transfers on farm households’ VEP are mainly in the west. In terms of the differences among households, it was found that land transfers contribute to lower VEP for non-poor, non-financing-constrained, and government-subsidized farm households. With regard to differences in household headship, land transfers have abating effects on the VEP of self-employed heads of farm households. The results of the study can provide a useful reference for policy-making on land management and poverty reduction among farmers
Ecological compensation (EC) is an important way to solve the imbalance of cross-regional economic development and realize regional coordinated development. How to quantify the standard of EC has ...become a hot research topic. Firstly, this paper selected the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR) as the study area, and constructed a cross-regional spillover ecological value measurement model based on the extended emergy analysis. From the perspective of the “ecology–economy–society” complex ecosystem, this paper used emergy to reflect the social, economic, and ecological function and service value of the TGRR, and estimated the ecosystem emergy supply and consumption in the TGRR. Then, comparing the watershed ecosystem emergy supply and consumption, we can judge the status of the ecological surplus and deficit of the TGRR, and transfer the spillover ecological emergy to spillover ecological value (SEV) by using the emergy currency ratio (ECR). Finally, combined with different actual payment level coefficient, we can obtain a relatively objective and robust compensation standard. The results show that the SEV of the TGRR in 2016 is 2.70 × 1011 USD, which indicates that the TGRR is in the state of ecological surplus. The TGRR should get EC about 2.85 × 1011 USD according to the ECR. Based on the research results, it is suggested to expand the transfer payment to the TGRR. At the same time, it is suggested to formulate different ecological compensation standard (ECS) according to regional differences, which has important practical significance to establish the allocation standard of EC, and provides a typical case basis for other large reservoir areas or typical reservoir areas.
As clean renewable energy with strong advantages, hydropower plays an extremely important role in promoting green development and energy allocation patterns. Hydropower project construction is ...characterized by long duration, large scale, high cost, many participants, and complex construction conditions, and is closely related to the economy, society, and ecological environment, and its construction management mode and construction risk management have become the focus of extensive attention from all walks of life. In this paper, the risk evaluation index system of hydropower engineering EPC project is constructed, and the linear weighted combination method is introduced to determine the comprehensive weights based on the calculation of weights by sequential relationship method and entropy weight method, and the improved fuzzy normal distribution is introduced as the subordinate function distribution of fuzzy evaluation level based on DS evidence theory and fuzzy theory. The risk evaluation model of a hydropower engineering EPC project is also established. Meanwhile, the model was analyzed with hydropower project examples to verify the accuracy and practicality of the model, which can guide hydropower project stakeholders to manage hydropower project risks comprehensively, collaboratively, and efficiently, and provide decision support for hydropower project construction risk management.
The integrity and health of the ecosystem is the material basis for the common prosperity of different minority areas. Since the acceleration of social and economic growth in the 21st century, ...excessive social development has caused ecological imbalance, climate change and environmental pollution and other problems. The irrational use of natural resources gradually affects the balance between man and nature. In this paper, the characteristics of ecosystem health and four sub-systems of environment, economy, society and management in the Three Gorges Reservoir area are selected to study. The purpose of this paper is to construct an ecosystem health evaluation index system to describe the characteristics of the ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Firstly, a multi-criteria evaluation model was established based on catastrophe theory to evaluate the health of the ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Secondly, the Catastrophe progression method (CPM) was used to describe the overall change trend of the ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir area from 2000 to 2016. The study shows that since 2000, with the development of economy and society and the further strengthening of environmental management, the health of the ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir area has been improved year by year. At the same time, in order to further explore the factors affecting the ecosystem health of the reservoir, the climate factors were added to the control variables, and the model regression analysis was established through panel data. The final conclusion was that the average temperature, rainfall and sunshine time had significant effects on the ecosystem of the reservoir.
In order to alleviate the problem of water shortage, the Ministry of Water Resources of China proposed a Water-Saving Contract (WSC) project management model in 2014, which is similar to the Energy ...Performance Contract (EPC). In this context, this research aims to explore the applicability of China’s WSC projects by risk assessment, and to help promote WSC projects in China. Different from traditional risk assessment, this paper takes into account the uncertainty of the EPC project’s risks, and adopts the multielement connection degree set pair analysis to evaluate both the level and trend of the risks. The results show: (1) the overall risk of China’s WSC projects is low, so WSC projects are very suitable for promotion in China. However, the overall risk shows a trend of decelerated ascent, which shows that there are some potential high-risk factors in China’s WSC projects; (2) among the many risks of the WSC projects, audit risk, financing risk, and payment risk are at a high-risk level; market competition risk is at a medium-risk level; the remaining risks are at a low-risk level; (3) among the medium and high risks, audit risk, financing risk, and market competition risk have a trend of accelerated ascent, while payment risk has a trend of decelerated decline; in low risks, inflation risk has a trend of decelerated ascent, while the remaining risks have a trend of accelerated decline.
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