Fencing to prevent livestock grazing has widely been implemented to restore vegetation and soils of degraded alpine meadows on the Zoige Plateau in recent decades, but its efficacy is still unclear. This study was designed to investigate the responses of plant community and soil properties to long-term fencing. We surveyed vegetation structure and production, soil physical and chemical properties in three sites, each having paired adjacent plots (i.e. one was fenced for 11–17 years and the other was allowed for regular grazing). Long-term fencing resulted in species loss at the community level and decreased plant species richness at the plot level. Fencing increased aboveground plant biomass and plant litter accumulation but reduced root biomass, and in particular it dramatically increased the aboveground biomass of grasses at the expense of legumes and sedges. Moreover, fencing decreased soil organic carbon and total N concentrations, and soil bulk density, but increased soil water infiltration rate, soil total P and soluble N concentrations, while soil soluble P concentration remained unchanged. These results indicate that long-term (> 11 years) fencing is not beneficial to plant diversity and soil organic carbon sequestration of the Zoige alpine meadows.

The study combines the Material Flow Analysis method and the Ecological Footprint Model to establish an indicator system of sustainable development.On the base of the indicator system, the state of ecological sustainable development during 2000-2010 in Tongling City was appraised.The results show that: (1 ) The direct material input ( DMI) keeps increasing averagely, with a value in 2010 2. 65 times higher than in 2000.The proportion of imports goes downward, while the DMI still depends heavily on import activities.Domestic hidden flow takes a large percentage in DPO;(2) The resource productivity of Tongling City has lagged behind the average of the whole country, though a progress has been made in the past decade; (3) Ecological footprint shows an increasing trend, with 7 hm 2 per capita in 2010.The gap between the ecological footprint and the ecological carrying capacity has been widening; (4) The indicator system shows that the level of sustainable development of the city is gradually decreasing.To achieve a real sustainable development, it is necessary to adjust the proportions among the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and transform the mode of economic development by building circulation economy.

This paper first applied material flow analysis (MFA) to construct three levels of regional eco-efficiency indicators, i.e., regional direct eco-efficiency (RDE), regional total eco-efficiency (RTE), and holistic eco-efficiency (HE), and adopted the newly developed data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the eco-efficiency of Tongling City during the period of 1990-2008. We also applied Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to explore the eco-efficiency change between two following years and its driving factors. The main results were summarized as 1) though the RDE of Tongling City in 1990-2008 kept an increasing trend, its mean eco-efficiency was not high (close to 0.8 in 80% of the years), being lower than that of the RTE and HE, and 2) the RDE change was closely relevant to the improvement in resource management and the technical input in environmental protection in recent years. In order to further improve the RDE of the City, it would be necessary to raise its eco-efficiency via expanding raw material input, reducing domestic extraction, promoting resources productivity, and taking more measures on environmental protection facilities construction.

通过物质流分析与系统动力学方法,深入研究铜陵市"十一五"期间工业系统资源消耗与污染排放特征,经济发展对生态环境压力,构建其"十二五"规划目标的工业内部结构优化模式,以期在未来经济活动中,指导经济与环境协调发展,指导矿产资源、能源利用规划及环境保护规划的制定.

Relationship between resource use and economic growth is the important field of resources and environmental economics studies.The paper attempts to integrate Material Flow Analysis(MFA) approach and the newly developed autoregressive distributed lag(ARDL)-bounds testing approach to examine the relationship between resource use and real GDP for Tongling City of Anhui Province,during the period of 1990~2008.The direct material input(DMI),one of sub-accounts of MFA,is also used as the proxy variable of resource use.The results of the bounds test indicate that a long-run cointegration relationship exists between the proxy of resource use and the explanatory variable:economic growth.The long-run parameters are estimated through a long-run static solution of the estimated ARDL model,and then the short-run dynamics are estimated by the error correction model.The study also indicates the existence of short-run and long-run causality running from resource use to economic growth.The findings imply that resource use is a stable forcing variable for economic growth in Tongling City.The estimation results are also of policy implication on economic development and resource conservation strategies for Tongling City.

Abstrac This article takes Tongling City in Anhui Province,one of China's typical resource based cities,as a study objective,conducts an empirical analysis on substance flow of copper resources.It's revealed by the analysis that the comprehensive utilization rate and recycling rate have reached a relatively high level,however,self-sufficiency rate is relatively low,and needed to take further measures.

改变矿竭城衰,实现矿产资源型城市可持续发展是我国矿产资源管理的重要内容,更是关系到国家资源安全、经济安全、生态环境安全和社会安全的首要任务.评价矿产资源型城市可持续发展状况是实现可持续发展道路的基础.采用相对"脱钩"、"复钩"的系统耦合理论的脱钩指数作为资源型城市经济-资源-环境复杂系统可持续发展状况的评价方法,选取经济系统物质流分析指标作为表征经济、资源、环境各子系统的可持续发展状况指标,并对安徽省铜陵市19年发展状况进行了评价,以期为矿产资源型城市可持续发展研究提供可资借鉴的研究资料.

Given that the urban area is a complex ecosystem consisted of natural, societal and economic entities, urban ecosystem health evaluation is necessary for the scientific decision-making and proper ecological restoration. In this paper, the framework and methodology of urban ecosystem health evaluation based on emergy are proposed. The system of indices is developed including vigor, structure, resilience, ecosystem service function maintenance, and environmental impact. The paper take Suzhou urban ecosystem as an example, introduce the method of emergy-based evaluation, then evaluate the Suzhou ecosystem health during 2000 to 2007. The results show that Suzhou has obtained the better ecosystem vigor, structure, resilience and service function maintenance during 2000-2007, there also had a larger environmental pressure during its development. But the general trend of urban ecosystem has great development in recent years.