scholarly journals Temporal and Spatial Change Monitoring of Drought Grade Based on ERA5 Analysis Data and BFAST Method in the Belt and Road Area during 1989–2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Changdi Xue ◽  
Hua Wu ◽  
Xiaoguang Jiang

Drought is a worldwide natural disaster with a wide range of influences and a long duration, which has a huge impact on the agricultural production activities and social economy of local residents. The Belt and Road Initiative has always received much attention due to its special geographical location and great potential for economic development. At the same time, the Belt and Road region is also deeply affected by drought, especially in some countries and regions, where the agricultural infrastructure is weak and the ecological environment is fragile. How to effectively monitor and evaluate drought has become an urgent problem to be solved. In this study, the ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis data were used, and the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index was combined with Breaks for Additive Seasonal and Trend (BFAST) to study the temporal and spatial distribution of the 1989–2017 monthly scale of drought in different climate regions of the Belt and Road region. The results show that the overall change trend of arid area shows a change of “up-down-up-down.” The winter drought area is larger than the summer drought area, and the drought center gradually moves from the Southeast Asia region in winter to the West–Central Asia region in summer. In the past five years, the drought area decreased gradually at the rate of approximately 0.38 million km2 per year.

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miao Bailing ◽  
Li Zhiyong ◽  
Liang Cunzhu ◽  
Wang Lixin ◽  
Jia Chengzhen ◽  
...  

Drought frequency and intensity have increased in recent decades, with consequences for the structure and function of ecosystems of the Inner Mongolian Plateau. In this study, the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) was chosen to assess the extent and severity of drought between 1982 and 2011. The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used to analyse the responses of five different vegetation types (forest, meadow steppe, typical steppe, desert steppe and desert) to drought. Our results show that during the last 30 years, the frequency and intensity of droughts have increased significantly, especially in summer and autumn. The greatest decline in NDVI in response to drought was observed in typical steppe and desert steppe vegetation types. Compared with other seasons, maximum decline in NDVI was observed in summer. In addition, we found that NDVI in the five vegetation types showed a lag time of 1–2 months from drought in the spring and summer. Ancillary soil moisture conditions influenced the drought response, with desert steppe showing a stronger lag effect to spring and summer drought than the other vegetation types. Our results show that drought explains a high proportion of changes in NDVI, and suggest that recent climate change has been an important factor affecting vegetation productivity in the area.


Complexity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Zihui Yang ◽  
Qingchun Meng ◽  
Chanjuan Li

Under “the Belt and Road” initiative, China promoted cooperation between domestic enterprises and international ports vigorously, which brought back fruitful results, while the rational selection of strategic pivots ports and the optimization of the layout of the port network are important guarantees to a further promotion to the economic development of “the Belt and Road” ports and give full play to the driving and radiation role of strategic pivots ports. On the basis of constructing a network of 155 ports in the world, according to the number of ports crossed by the shortest path and betweenness centrality in the network, this paper uses K-Medoids clustering algorithm to train the strategic importance of ports and verifies the reliability of the analysis results. On this basis, the joint coverage analysis of strategically important ports is carried out, 17 ports are identified as strategic pivots ports of the global port network, and, finally, based on the two attributes of “the Belt and Road” and “Chinese enterprise participation” of strategic pivots ports, the leading role of strategic pivots ports in geographical location, path coverage, development potential, cooperation stability, and control is analyzed, and instructive suggestions are put forward.


2021 ◽  
pp. SP518-2021-167
Author(s):  
Rajesh K. Srivastava ◽  
Richard E. Ernst ◽  
Kenneth L. Buchan ◽  
Michiel de Kock

AbstractIdentification of large volume, short duration mafic magmatic events of intraplate affinity in both continental and oceanic settings on the Earth and other planets provides invaluable clues for understanding several vital geological issues of current concern. Of particular importance is understanding the assembly and dispersal of supercontinents through Earth's history, dramatic climate change events including mass extinctions, and processes that have produced a wide range of LIP-related resources such as Ni-Cu-PGE, Au, U, base metals, and petroleum. This current volume presents some of the latest developments and new information on the temporal and spatial distribution of LIPs in both the Precambrian and Phanerozoic, their origin, the plumbing system of mafic dyke swarms, sill provinces, and layered inrusions, and links to mantle plumes/superplumes events, supercontinent reconstructions and associated metallogeny.


Entropy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Liao ◽  
Xiao-Min Huang ◽  
Alexandre Vidmer ◽  
Yi-Cheng Zhang ◽  
Ming-Yang Zhou

The Belt and Road initiative (BRI) was announced in 2013 by the Chinese government. Its goal is to promote the cooperation between European and Asian countries, as well as enhancing the trust between members and unifying the market. Since its creation, more and more developing countries are joining the initiative. Based on the geographical location characteristics of the countries in this initiative, we propose an improvement of a popular recommendation algorithm that includes geographic location information. This recommendation algorithm is able to make suitable recommendations of products for countries in the BRI. Then, Fitness and Complexity metrics are used to evaluate the impact of the recommendation results and measure the country’s competitiveness. The aim of this work is to provide countries’ insights on the ideal development direction. By following the recommendations, the countries can quickly increase their international competitiveness.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Chen ◽  
Tongwen Zhang ◽  
Andrea Seim ◽  
Shulong Yu ◽  
Ruibo Zhang ◽  
...  

Coniferous forests cover the mountains in many parts of Central Asia and provide large potentials for dendroclimatic studies of past climate variability. However, to date, only a few tree-ring based climate reconstructions exist from this region. Here, we present a regional tree-ring chronology from the moisture-sensitive Zeravshan juniper (Juniperus seravschanica Kom.) from the Kuramin Range (Tajikistan) in western Central Asia, which is used to reveal past summer drought variability from 1650 to 2015 Common Era (CE). The chronology accounts for 40.5% of the variance of the June–July self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) during the instrumental period (1901 to 2012). Seven dry periods, including 1659–1696, 1705–1722, 1731–1741, 1758–1790, 1800–1842, 1860–1875, and 1931–1987, and five wet periods, including 1742–1752, 1843–1859, 1876–1913, 1921–1930, and 1988–2015, were identified. Good agreements between drought records from western and eastern Central Asia suggest that the PDSI records retain common drought signals and capture the regional dry/wet periods of Central Asia. Moreover, the spectral analysis indicates the existence of centennial (128 years), decadal (24.3 and 11.4 years), and interannual (8.0, 3.6, 2.9, and 2.0 years) cycles, which may be linked with climate forces, such as solar activity and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The analysis between the scPDSI reconstruction and large-scale atmospheric circulations during the reconstructed extreme dry and wet years can provide information about the linkages of extremes in our scPDSI record with the large-scale ocean–atmosphere–land circulation systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Shan Gao ◽  
Maoguo Wu

As a new Chinese national strategy, ‘The Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative’ has attracted substantial interest with its broad development prospect and huge economic impetus. However, existing research is not comprehensive due to the limitation of specific industry and there are few empirical studies. This paper adopted the panel data of key participating provinces in China from 2008 to 2017 according to the China City Statistical Yearbook to fill in the research gap. Around the issue of whether the B&R initiative promotes the economic development of Chinese key participating provinces along the routes, this paper proposed three hypotheses and used DID, PSM-DID and DDD methods to study relevant factors and the influencing mechanism. The empirical results show that the B&R policy could promote the overall economic development of participants on the whole, despite a certain degree of policy effect lag. Moreover, after the division of geographical location and administrative level in the eastern and west-central regions of China, the study found that the B&R initiative has significantly facilitated the advancement of the economy in the west-central areas, especially the less developed regions. In addition, after the classification of marketization degree, it is found that the B&R policy has a greater promoting effect on regions with high marketization degree than those with low marketization degree. Through the mechanism test, it is discovered that the tertiary industry is the main economic accelerator for growth in central and western China. Finally, based on the empirical results, this paper provided policy suggestions to further implement the B&R strategy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Erbach

AbstractAchieving and managing economic sustainability is one of the crucial tasks for our globalized world. One of the most ambitious economic projects known to humankind claims to stand for long-term global economic sustainability including ecological, social, and cultural aspects: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in which China invites the world to join its vision of a “peaceful cooperation for the wealth and cultural exchange of all nations” (Xi Jinping 2013 in his famous speech Promote People-to-People Friendship an Create a Better Future). This invitation led to a wide range of responses, from fundamental rejection to supportive participation. Matching the participants in this megaproject—their contributions, particular prerequisites, and development interests—requires a holistic participative planning approach with solutions tailored specifically to the participating partners. This article shows how Pragmatic Identity Matching (PrIM), a scalable integration framework, can be used to meet this requirement. PrIM provides an identity-oriented infrastructure for aligned planning, implementation and communications, acknowledging, and embracing participants from different cultural backgrounds such as Asian, Arabian, African, Russian, and European cultures. As a structural-scientific approach that synthesizes elemental semiotic thinking and research in psychology and the neurosciences, PrIM provides a meta-planning structure beyond any value-driven positions and perspectives, one that imparts equivalence to information. PrIM can help the BRI avoid a spiral of non-coordinated activities, thereby preventing loss of investment. The formation of a transdisciplinary BRI Management Academy that uses PrIM would help create the necessary infrastructure for a successful and transparent implementation of the BRI.


Author(s):  
Wang Tao ◽  
Li Mengqi

With the increase in China’s opening up to the outside world, the implementation of China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy has become more in-depth, and foreign-invested enterprises have an indispensable role in China’s economic growth. As the starting point of the Silk Road, with its unique geographical location and important strategic position, Shaanxi will link Shaanxi with the regional enterprises in the Belt and Road, which will improve the utilization rate of foreign capital in Shaanxi Province in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. The cooperation of countries along the way has important and realistic significance. Based on the data of foreign-invested enterprises in Shaanxi Province in 2017, this paper analyzes the business characteristics and business performance of the regional enterprises in the Belt and Road in Shaanxi. Finally, draw the conclusion of this paper and give the corresponding policy recommendations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (16) ◽  
pp. 6633-6647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Ho ◽  
Upmanu Lall ◽  
Edward R. Cook

Abstract Evolving patterns of droughts and wet spells in the conterminous United States (CONUS) are examined over 555 years using a tree-ring-based paleoclimate reconstruction of the modified Palmer drought severity index (PDSI). A hidden Markov model is used as an unsupervised method of classifying climate states and quantifying the temporal evolution from one state to another. Modeling temporal variability in spatial patterns of drought and wet spells provides the ability to objectively assess and simulate historical persistence and recurrence of similar patterns. The Viterbi algorithm reveals the probable sequence of states through time, enabling an examination of temporal and spatial features and associated large-scale climate forcing. Distinct patterns of sea surface temperature that are known to enhance or inhibit rainfall are associated with some states. Using the current CONUS PDSI field the model can be used to simulate the space–time PDSI pattern over the next few years, or unconditional simulations can be used to derive estimates of spatially concurrent PDSI patterns and their persistence and intensity across the CONUS.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Enrique Serrano Moreno ◽  
Diego Telias ◽  
Francisco Urdinez

PurposeThe objective of this study is to address the diplomatic and economic implications of the participation of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).Design/methodology/approachThe study examines official documents related to the BRI and LAC's signing of the Memorandum of Understanding within the framework of the BRI (MoUs) in order to look into what it means to join the BRI. Additionally, it also introduces the findings of articles in Asian Education and Development Studies' current issue published in 2020.FindingsIn LAC, the BRI does not represent a new policy, but rather the updating and rebranding of a pre-existing one. The BRI primarily consists of an official discursive framework which aims to build a coherent narrative for a wide range of different projects and policies geared toward the improvement of connectivity with China through the development of trade and investments. However, most of these projects were implemented prior to the BRI. Pragmatism lies at the core of this framework which neither has a regulated accession process nor any binding effects. As a result, the signing the MoU represents, foremost, a diplomatic mise-en-scène. The study operates under the belief that BRI membership is not dichotomous; rather, it must be observed in terms of the countries' level of participation. In line with this, the implementation of a generalized BRI policy in LAC countries would not be advisable. Moreover, it must be noted that the BRI's reach to Latin America can be rather problematic due to the fact that the latter was not initially a participant.Originality/valueThe study aims to explore the significance of the BRI beyond the official discourse and discuss the involvement of LAC countries in it. Scholars studying the BRI in other regions have noted that there is not enough information on this policy in the context of LAC.


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