ALBERT

Description: Sustainability, Vol. 10, Pages 290: Identifying Spatiotemporal Interactions between Urbanization and Eco-Environment in the Urban Agglomeration in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, China Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su10010290 Authors: Yan Yu Yan Tong Wenwu Tang Yanbin Yuan Yue Chen Urban agglomeration has become a crucial topic in order for the Chinese government to promote new-type urbanization in China, and its urbanization will greatly affect China’s eco-environment. Existing literature on bidirectional influence between urbanization and eco-environment from the perspective of urban agglomeration is, however, limited. This study establishes a conceptual framework to identify bidirectional relationships between urbanization and eco-environment in urban agglomerations. After evaluating urbanization level and eco-environment quality for each city in an urban agglomeration, this framework determines key interaction factors, and employs a global regression approach to quantify the coercing effects of urbanization on eco-environment and constraining effects of eco-environment on urbanization. Spatial heterogeneity of bidirectional interactions is then examined using local regression, represented by geographically weighted regression. The case study in the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River from 2000 to 2015 indicated the existence of bidirectional interactions and coercing threat that was stronger than constraining pressure in this region. The coercion that urbanization posed on the eco-environment began to vary in space significantly from 2010, whereas the constraint of eco-environment on urbanization was spatially stationary. This study will help policy-makers to develop sustainable policies to balance urban development and eco-environment conservation.

Description: Water, Vol. 10, Pages 318: Trend and Variability in Droughts in Northeast China Based on the Reconnaissance Drought Index Water doi: 10.3390/w10030318 Authors: Yuan Yue Shuang-he Shen Qi Wang Drought is a recurrent meteorological phenomenon that can be disastrous for humans; however, drought characteristics vary substantially in different regions. We use meteorological data from 140 stations in Northeast China for the period 1970–2014 to calculate the reconnaissance drought index (RDI) in order to examine droughts. We also analyze the strength of the relationships between the main large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and RDI. Drought trends in the region are largely decreasing, but in the majority of cases, there is no statistical significance. Spatially, the pattern of droughts is a less frequent occurrence with greater severity and longer duration, mainly in the western part of the region. Severe droughts for the periods 1975–1979 and 2000–2004 were found, and most of these droughts occurred in the western part of Northeast China. The correlations between RDI and the atmospheric circulation indices POL, IAZC, and IEAT are negative, but the correlation between RDI and PDO is positive. The relationship between RDI and POL is stronger than the others, and the lagged effect is particularly obvious; thus POL can be recognized as the major driver of droughts over the period 1970–2014 in Northeast China.