Deforestation In China Research Articles

Is there a conservation relationship between tourism, economic output, and forest areas?

AbstractThis study employed advanced panel data analysis, accounting for cross‐sectional dependence and heterogeneity, to investigate the impact of tourism development and economic output on forest areas in major international tourist markets. The research was guided by forest transformation hypothesis (FTH). The study assessed the validity of FTH, examined the influence of tourism, and identified the income level at which a turning point occurs. The results revealed a heterogeneous impact of tourism on forested areas across major international tourist markets. Specifically, tourism development encouraged afforestation in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but led to deforestation in China. In contrast, no significant relationship was observed between the tourism‐forest area nexus in Türkiye and Thailand. Additionally, the study provided evidence supporting FTH in the relationship between economic growth and forested areas in Italy, Spain, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Given these findings, the paper underscores the strong heterogeneity among the individual countries and their tourism, economic development, and forest areas. Consequently, country‐specific sustainable policies are advocated over generic approaches in the fight against deforestation.

Deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions could arise when replacing palm oil with other vegetable oils

Oil crops are among the main drivers of global land use changes. Palm oil is possibly the most criticized, as a driver of primary tropical forests loss. This has generated two different reactions in its use in various sectors (e.g., food, feed, biodiesel, surfactant applications, etc.): from one side there is a growing claim for deforestation-free palm oil, whereas on the other side the attention raised towards other vegetable oils as possible substitutes, such as soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oil. We assess potential land use changes and consequent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for switching from palm oil to other oils and compare this solution to deforestation-free palm oils. We consider three scenarios of 25 %, 50 % and 100 % palm oil replacement in the eight major oil crop producing countries. Total GHG emissions account for anthropogenic emissions generated along the life cycle of the field production process and potential forest carbon stock losses from land use change for oil crops expansion. Replacing palm oil with other oils would have a worthless effect in terms of global emissions reduction since GHG emissions remain approximatively stable across the three scenarios, whereas it would produce a deforestation increase of 28.2 to 51.9 Mha worldwide (or 7 to 21.5 Mha if excluding the unlikely deforestation in USA, Russia, Ukraine and the offset deforestation in China, India). Conversely, if the global palm oil production becomes deforestation-free, its GHG emissions would be reduced by 92 %, switching from the current 371 to 29 Mt CO2eq per year. Although highlighting the historical unsustainability of oil palm plantations, results show that replacing them with other oil crops almost never represents a more sustainable solution, thus potentially questioning sustainability claims of palm oil free products with respect to deforestation-free palm oil.

Reconstructing deforestation patterns in China from 2000 to 2019

Forests are important for the global carbon cycle, hydrothermal balance, and climate change. Human activities can exert a significant impact on forest ecosystems, thereby having the potential to alter their physical and chemical properties and thus affecting carbon, water, and heat budgets, and climate change. The historical reconstruction of the disturbance of global forests can help us understand the processes and patterns of human activities and global change. In this paper, we construct a deforestation prediction model using a Spearman correlation coefficient and implement the XGBoost method, using Python 3.6, for the reconstruction of deforestation intensity data from 2000 to 2019. Secondly, the selection of the driver indicators is done by using extreme difference regularization to unify the magnitude, and the potential deforestation area risk index is calculated in the form of equal weights. Finally, the actual deforestation data were used for optimization and validation. The model shows that the deforestation hotspots are mainly concentrated in the southern and southeastern regions of China and that there are large differences in deforestation in different provinces. In the future, the fine spatial and temporal patterns of deforestation in China during the historical period can be quantitatively reconstructed, which can provide some reference information for forest disaster prevention and forest management in China.

Pressure cookers or pressure valves: Do roads lead to deforestation in China?

The effect of roads on forests is ambiguous. Many studies conclude that building and upgrading roads increases pressure on forests but some find that new and better roads may reduce the rate of deforestation. In this paper we use satellite remote sensing images of forest cover in Jiangxi Province, China, to test whether the existence and the size of roads (ranging from expressways to tertiary roads) in 1995 affected the level of forest cover in 2000 or the rate of change between 1995 and 2000. To account for road access for each of our 1 km 2 (“pixel”) units of forest cover we measure whether or not and what type of roads penetrate the “watershed” in which the pixel lies. These watersheds allow more plausible measures of accessibility than do traditional “crowfly” distance measures that ignore topography. To account for possible confounding we also use 12 additional covariates: geographic and climatic variables (e.g., elevation, slope, rainfall, temperature, soil properties); demographic and economic variables (e.g., local population and GDP per square kilometer); and distance variables (e.g., distance to the nearest provincial capital). Although simple univariate OLS regressions show that forest levels are lower and deforestation rates higher either when there is a road, or when there is a higher quality road, these results are not robust. Controlling for all of the covariates and also using recently developed covariate matching techniques to estimate treatment effects, we find that roads in China’s Jiangxi Province can most safely be described as having no impact on the level of forests and no impact on the rate of deforestation.

The Communication Model and the Nature of Change in Terms of Deforestation in China Since 1949

This article explores the communication model and nature of change in terms of deforestation in China since 1949. Through Lasswell's communication model and the theory of change and via historical analysis and extended literature review, we have discovered: First, Mao's government adopted an effective one-way top-down communication model with Chinese characteristics during 1949 and 1978, which facilitated deforestation in China leading to massive economic dislocation and immense waste of resources. Second, the Chinese government's change to practical ideology brought about new administrative practices of enacting forest protection laws and reorientating the relevant workforces to use available technologies for the production of exported furniture with imported timber. Finally, the paradigmatic shift in the Chinese forest management has partially relocated deforestation from China to other countries, which calls for urgent international attention.

L’Automobile autrefois: Une difficile adoption by Pierre-Lucien Pouzet

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 163 technology to the Asian-Pacific region the author credits Chinese traders and overseas emigrants as transmitters of such knowledge. After reading Daniels’s analysis of sugar industries in Chinese his­ tory, this reviewer still feels somewhat puzzled on one score: why did not rum-making, which is extremely profitable (as shown in the West Indies), ever appear in China? Nicholas Menzies derived his information on forestry from Chi­ nese literary sources on agriculture and arboriculture, and from lo­ cal gazetteers. His main argument is that the Chinese had a rather consistent approach to regulating the use of forest resources that fit the Chinese concept of ecological equilibrium. The author charts Chinese ways and means of harvesting, transporting, and measuring wood, as well as Chinese cosmology, which was closely related to their vision of the ecosystem. A serious deforestation problem occurred in the late 12th century as demand for iron rose and with it demand for charcoal. Menzies compares deforestation in China with the same phenomenon in Eu­ rope, suggesting that these events should be considered in ecologi­ cal context, as well as in socioeconomic and political institutional contexts. I agree with Menzies on this point in principle. However, demographic change in China, which has had a constant increase in population since the Ming-Ch’ing period, should be regarded as a condition of great pertinence to deforestation in China. Cho-yun Hsu Dr. Hsu is University Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. One of his several books is Han Agricultures (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1980). L ’Automobile autrefois: Une difficile adoption. By Pierre-Lucien Pouzet. Lyons: Horvath, 1996. Pp. 143; illustrations. FF 130. This short book is a collection of anecdotes, mostly from France, illustrating public hostility to automobiles in the years up to 1914. The author has written a number of accounts ofautomobile history, including a book on the Rochet-Schneider company. M. Pouzet draws his tales largely from a dozen French automobile magazines of the period, along with a few books that deal with the early years of the industry. He organizes the stories in several categories: a) the unaesthetic appearance ofcars—that is, lacking horses to pull them, they seemed to be unfinished; b) hostile local governments, police, and magistrates; c) measures applied by small towns to impede or harrass motorists; d) the antagonism of some newspapers; e) the dislike or even hatred that some individuals expressed toward motor cars; and f) a few accounts of occurrences in other European coun­ tries and the United States. The book is filled with illustrations, mostly cartoons of the period, 164 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE amusingly depicting the confrontations ofauto drivers with animals, peasants, policemen,judges, and other enemies. Some of the stories are hardly credible, probably invented by clever journalists. One wonders about the complaint of some English farmers who alleged that dust raised by autos rushing by on country roads and settled on their fields dulled their scythes and sickles twice as fast as normal. Many of the yarns attributed to the French context are familiar to students of auto history elsewhere, such as the one about the Nor­ man resident who in 1899 invented an “articulated tree” that was hinged near its base and would be dropped on a motorist. M. Pouzet supplies better documentation for this story than any other, includ­ ing several photos from a magazine showing the tree and the wind­ lass used to raise it for another plunge. In the United States someone is supposed to have rigged a similar articulated tree on a road near Toledo. Unsurprising also are the accounts of farmers pushing dis­ eased cows and chickens onto the road to be dispatched by speeding cars or even throwing themselves under slower-moving vehicles in hopes of minor injury and reimbursement. Common causes such as the early autos’ surprising speed, dust, noise, and smell, along with antagonism of the poor toward wealthy drivers, brought similar results wherever the motor car appeared. This book is in no way scientific or scholarly; there is no effort at quantification; but it is useful for an hour or two of entertainment. It also reminds us...

Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 6, Biology and Biological Technology. Pt. 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry by Christian Daniels and Nicholas K. Menzies

162 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE In the last analysis, this fine book will prove invaluable to anyone who studies the history of technology from an international perspec­ tive. Gail A. Cooper Dr. Cooper teaches at Lehigh University. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 6, Biology and Biological Technol­ ogy. Pt. 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry. By Christian Daniels and Nicholas K. Menzies, with a foreword byJoseph Needham. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxvii+740; illustra­ tions, maps, figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $150.00 (hardcover). This volume is the latest of seventeen books in the series edited byjoseph Needham, who died in March 1995 while this volume was in press. We are all indebted to him for opening an entire field of studies on Chinese contributions in science and technology. This volume consists of two independent sections, one on sugar­ cane technology by Christian Daniels and another on forestry by Nicholas K. Menzies. Both are exhaustive scholarly studies on their respective subjects. The first, which takes up more than two-thirds of this volume, is focused upon the sugar industry, although the author also includes very brief discussions on such other agroindustries as oil, paper, in­ digo, lacquer, and tea, each of which might merit fuller treatment as important industrial products based on agriculture. Daniels draws information from a wide range of sources, including agricultural and technological treatises, local gazettes, and reports written by visitors/travelers who witnessed sugar production in various coun­ tries. He investigates methods and techniques of sugar production from both the agricultural dimension ofgrowing sugar cane and the industrial dimension of sugar manufacture. He argues convincingly for the Indian origin ofsugar-making, its introduction to China, and further spread from China to Southeast Asia, the Pacific islands, and Japan. Chinese who learned sugar manufacture from Indians in turn developed their own techniques. For instance, probably from their experience of oil extraction and cotton-grain, Chinese developed double-roller milling and edge-runner devices that were later adopted by other people. Daniels rightly pays attention to socioeconomic conditions in the Chinese agrarian system, such as small-scale intensive farming and a marketing network. He notes that there were no large-scale sugar industries based on slavery. He suggests that Chinese relied upon managerial expertise rather than technological solutions to make sugar manufacture profitable. Regarding the diversion of Chinese TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 163 technology to the Asian-Pacific region the author credits Chinese traders and overseas emigrants as transmitters of such knowledge. After reading Daniels’s analysis of sugar industries in Chinese his­ tory, this reviewer still feels somewhat puzzled on one score: why did not rum-making, which is extremely profitable (as shown in the West Indies), ever appear in China? Nicholas Menzies derived his information on forestry from Chi­ nese literary sources on agriculture and arboriculture, and from lo­ cal gazetteers. His main argument is that the Chinese had a rather consistent approach to regulating the use of forest resources that fit the Chinese concept of ecological equilibrium. The author charts Chinese ways and means of harvesting, transporting, and measuring wood, as well as Chinese cosmology, which was closely related to their vision of the ecosystem. A serious deforestation problem occurred in the late 12th century as demand for iron rose and with it demand for charcoal. Menzies compares deforestation in China with the same phenomenon in Eu­ rope, suggesting that these events should be considered in ecologi­ cal context, as well as in socioeconomic and political institutional contexts. I agree with Menzies on this point in principle. However, demographic change in China, which has had a constant increase in population since the Ming-Ch’ing period, should be regarded as a condition of great pertinence to deforestation in China. Cho-yun Hsu Dr. Hsu is University Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. One of his several books is Han Agricultures (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1980). L ’Automobile autrefois: Une difficile adoption. By Pierre-Lucien Pouzet. Lyons: Horvath, 1996. Pp. 143; illustrations. FF 130. This short book is a collection of anecdotes, mostly from France, illustrating public hostility to automobiles in the years up to 1914. The author has...

Numerical simulation for the impact of deforestation on climate in china and its neighboring regions

In this paper, the CCMOB model is used to study the effect of the deforestation on the climate of China and its neighboring regions. On the assumption that the forest in China would be replaced by the vegetation(such as grassland), the distribution of the albedo changed was calculated. The initial fields used were taken from the FGGE zonal mean data on 16 July, 1979. In the control simulation, the observed albedo data were used to modify the physical parameters of the original model. The control and sensitive experiments were run each for 210 days, in which the external forcing fields were fixed in July. As a result, we find that the East Asian Monsoon, Hadley cell and troposphere easterly jet are weakened for the deforestation in China. The precipitation and cloud amount over China are also decreased. The changes in evaporation and surface temperature are small. The results also show that the deforestation in China exerts a remarkable effect on the climate in the neighboring regions of China.

Some effects of deforestation in China

This study deals with the historical impacts of mining as a result of the economic development in Eastern Asia. It focuses on landscape changes caused by the emerging copper mining industry in China's south east provinces. Since the ecological aftermath has never been documented in Chinese history, a reconstruction of dynamic landscape processes is performed. A key region for this reconstruction are the mining areas in Yunnan province. This province was the most important supplying region of copper in China during the early and mid Qing dynasty (1725–1855).Predictive modeling of the primary vegetation in combination with dynamic agent-based reconstructions have been performed to analyze and to understand deforestation processes. Therefore a time-discrete balance between biomass removal and renewal has been carried out to characterize different periods of landscape degradation, biodiversity and agriculture. Besides the reconstruction, explanatory and experimental results have been compiled to assess the ecological impacts of mining during this period.An ‘Evaludation’ of the model was performed in order to verify the applied concepts and test the integration of data as well as the conclusive generation of results. Our calculations show that while deforestation for mining was severe in the 18th and 19th century, rising populations and agricultural reclamation had a bigger impact on the clearance of forests. In addition, quantitative data for the ecological succession show that deforestation was reduced by up to 75% due to the provision of regrowing biomass. Deforested areas around the mines were either completely destroyed or of high biodiversity due to the abundance of heterogenous vegetation communities within small spaces. Lastly, two extreme scenarios were calculated which covered all positive and negative triggers of deforestation. These calculations served as reference data to evaluate model's quality: our model outputs lie within the range of comparable studies but underestimate the total deforestation reported and yet some uncertainties regarding forest fires and other uses of biomass remain. This study has led to a more holistic understanding of the interactions between copper mining and landscape ecology in Chinese history.