Black soils feed the world yet remain undervalued in food and climate governance frameworks. A policy package, including global monitoring as public infrastructure, co-designed and place-based solutions based on tailored tools, planning that fits land and people, mobilizing alliance with finance and force, and mainstreaming black soils in global pacts, can contribute to improving land quality and stabilize yields where it matters most.

As China’s carbon emissions continue to rise amid rapid economic growth, establishing a robust national carbon trading market remains critical for balancing sustainability with development. This study examines the driving factors behind carbon pricing mechanisms in China’s seven regional pilot markets (Beijing, Shanghai, etc.), addressing gaps in unified standards, regulatory frameworks, and international cooperation when compared to mature systems like the European Union Emissions Trading System. Using monthly data on energy prices, industrial indices, and financial market stability from 2014 to 2017, we applied factor analysis to quantify their effects on carbon prices. The results showed that carbon prices were positively correlated with both domestic and international energy prices but negatively associated with industrial output and financial market stability. Key contributions include identifying region-specific price disparities linked to quota allocation mechanisms (e.g., auctions vs. free allocations) and proposing three targeted recommendations: (1) harmonise regional quota allocation and auction pricing to reduce price volatility; (2) unify market rules and strengthen legal penalties to enhance regulatory credibility; and (3) align long-term emission goals with corporate incentives while establishing a national monitoring system to improve data transparency. This study offers empirical evidence for optimising China’s carbon pricing system, highlighting the urgency of institutional integration and strategic policy design to support the development of a cohesive national carbon market. Highlights. Differences between China and EU carbon emissions trading market are analyzed. Reveals energy prices as dominant driver of China’s carbon market price fluctuations. First study integrates financial stability indicators into China’s carbon pricing model. Quantifies supply–demand imbalance effects across 7 pilot carbon markets.

Boreal forests, crucial global carbon stocks, depend on stable carbon use efficiency (CUE) to sustain vegetation carbon allocation under climate warming. Integrating multi-source remote sensing and model simulations, we revealed a significant CUE decline (-0.009 yr-1) across 71.5% of boreal regions (2001-2022), particularly in Siberia, northern Canada, and the eastern European plain, despite increasing gross/net primary productivity. This was driven by nonlinear threshold responses to temperature and precipitation, with extreme summer high temperatures and droughts causing significant CUE decline, 3.8 times greater than in spring. Impacts varied by vegetation functional type: evergreen needleleaf forests (CUE = 0.65) showed the highest CUE and lowest drought sensitivity, whereas deciduous broadleaf forests (CUE = 0.61) had a 30.7% higher probability of CUE decline under extreme high temperature. Projections indicate a 61.3% expansion of extreme high temperature areas by 2100, increasing risks to biomass carbon accumulation. These findings elucidate threshold-driven vegetation carbon allocation responses and provide insights for resilience-oriented forest management in warming climates.

This paper proposes an innovative research algorithm "measurement-pattern-driving force-synergy" that determines the eco-efficiency of 83 Russian federal subjects (2000-2019) using the Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model with non-desired outputs (incorporating comprehensive input indicators such as water resources and electricity input, and dual non-desired outputs of waste gas and wastewater). Combined with hot spot analysis, a gravity center model, and panel Tobit regression, we reveal the temporal-spatial evolution and driving mechanisms of eco-efficiency in resource-based economies. The research finds that the overall eco-efficiency of Russia is at a medium level and shows a dynamic correlation with the economic development stage. In the early stage of the period under review, there was a high degree of synergy, but the efficiency declined during the period of rapid economic growth. Later, it rebounded somewhat in tie with technological progress. Spatially, it presents a special pattern of low efficiency in the western European industrialized regions and high efficiency in the Arctic and Far East peripheral regions, reflecting the spatial heterogeneity of resource-dependent economies and the survival-constrained efficiency feature. The analysis of influencing factors indicates that per capita GDP has a significant positive driving effect on eco-efficiency, but the expansion of residents' consumption, the improvement of education level and the dependence on foreign trade all have inhibitory effects, highlighting the path dependence of the current growth model on the structure of resource consumption. The research suggests that Russia should implement differentiated spatial governance in the future, promote the green transformation of consumption and trade structures, and strengthen the ecological orientation of the education and scientific research system to achieve a fundamental transformation of regional sustainable development from survival constraints to innovation-driven.

This study advances meta-frontier energy efficiency analysis by addressing the restrictive assumption of static technology club allocation in conventional frameworks, which often distorts efficiency and technology gap assessments. We propose a three-stage meta-frontier non-radial directional distance function framework that incorporates technology switchers, enabling dynamic reallocation across technology clubs. Using this framework, we demonstrate analytically and empirically that ignoring technology switching conflates managerial inefficiency with technological inferiority, leading to potentially misguided policy interventions. Applying the model to 90 Belt and Road Initiative countries, we find: (1) technology clubs stratify into leaders, followers, and laggards, with 27 countries exhibiting technology switchers; (2) total factor energy performance (TFEP) exhibits significant stratification (leaders: 0.6615, followers: 0.5180, laggards: 0.5952), with switchers (e.g., those moving from followers to leaders) substantially influencing both TFEP optimization potential (enhancing selfimprovement in switchers by 1.0789 and non-switchers' by 1.1300) and technology gap dynamics (reducing self-advancement needs in switchers to 0.9497 and enhancing non-switchers' to 1.0008); and (3) technology switchers fundamentally alter the sources of energy performance loss, indicating that conventional static models may misdiagnose policy priorities between managerial optimization and technological upgrading. These results underscore the necessity of integrating dynamic technology-switching mechanisms into energy efficiency analyses to yield more reliable and policy-relevant insights.

The ski tourism industry influences regional socio-economic development. Misalignment between resource endowments and utilization patterns, however, leads to imbalances in water and energy resource allocation and economic disparities, resulting in spatial unevenness. This study assesses the developmental imbalances within China's ski tourism industry, utilizing a water-energy-economy nexus (W-E-E-N) perspective and an Environmental Extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EE-MRIO). The findings reveal that multiplier effects amplified economic growth, with a 2.60-fold. Contrary to previous research concluding a positive correlation between revenue and resource use in ski tourism, this study finds that while the economic footprint grew at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.24%, the water and energy footprints had CAGR of -8.69% and - 3.60% from 2015 to 2023, respectively. The water footprint is dominated by strong decoupling, and the energy footprint by weak decoupling. By analysing internal and external footprint proportions and net destination evolution, this section reveals how provincial dependencies shape W-E-E footprints disparities in China's ski tourism industry. Regional disparities reveal the Eastern demand-driven economic gains contrasted with the Northern and Northwestern resource burdens. Demand expansion dominated resource consumption, with limited mitigation from technological advances. The study aligns with SDG 6 and 7, and constructs a policy framework to coordinate the water-energy-economy relationship in the ski tourism industry from four dimensions, including policy guidance, technology orientation, market adjustment, and regional collaboration. The study's findings offer useful insights for developing countries and markets experiencing rapid growth in ski tourism.

Cross-border regions often exhibit complex vegetation-related land-cover patterns due to contrasting natural conditions and divergent development trajectories, causing multi-source land-cover products to suffer from disagreements in class assignment and boundary delineation, especially for cropland, forestland, and grassland. Because border zones are rarely mapping priorities, classification instability near national boundaries undermines transboundary comparisons. To address this, we propose a Conflict-aware Adaptive Distillation Fusion Network (CADF-Net) that fuses multi-source land-cover products to improve the discrimination and spatial consistency of key vegetation classes in cross-border regions. Taking the transnational China–Russia border (Sanjiang Plain and Primorskiy Kray) as a representative case, we integrate geo-environmental factors and introduce a pixel-level Conflict Index (CI) to explicitly steer the model toward discrepancy-prone areas. Building on this, we develop an Adaptive Distillation U-Net (AD-UNet) with uncertainty-adaptive distillation and employ a confidence-guided, dynamically weighted ensemble to generate the final fused land-cover product (CADF-LC). Quantitative assessments demonstrate that CADF-LC achieved an OA of 0.8600, a Kappa of 0.8133, and an mIoU of 0.7589, outperforming all input land-cover products. Compared with the strongest input product, Esri Land Cover, CADF-LC improved OA by 0.0150 and mIoU by 0.0222. Furthermore, it effectively mitigates the trade-off between detail loss and morphological fragmentation. Ultimately, CADF-Net enhances classification stability for key vegetation classes, offering a reliable foundation for transboundary ecological monitoring and land management.

Clarifying the relationship between ecosystem services (ESs) and human well-being (HWB) is crucial for ensuring ecological security and guiding sustainable development in China’s ecologically prioritized but economically underdeveloped regions. However, the ability of ESs improvements to effectively enhance HWB remains uncertain amid the twin challenges of environmental conservation and poverty alleviation. This study assessed the spatiotemporal coordination between ESs and HWB across functional zones in the GTAP region from 2000 to 2020, using a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-oriented framework. Results showed that all five ESs improved to varying degrees, with the greatest increases in agricultural areas. HWB increased most rapidly in agricultural zones, rising by 133.1%. The agro-pastoral ecotone exhibited moderate ESs improvement and relatively stable HWB, while pastoral areas, despite limited ESs increases, achieved HWB levels comparable to agro-pastoral ecotone by 2020. Despite these improvements, the overall coupling coordination between ESs and HWB remained low, with habitat quality (HQ) showing the highest correlation (0.4–0.5) and soil retention (SR) the lowest (0.1–0.2). Spatial coordination improved most in pastoral areas, where equilibrium areas expanded by 350.5%. Mechanism analysis revealed significant spatial heterogeneity: stable provisioning services were the main driver of HWB improvement in agricultural areas, while their instability constrained progress in pastoral areas. In the agro-pastoral ecotone, enhanced supporting services played a key role in sustaining HWB. These findings emphasize the importance of both enhancing and stabilizing ESs delivery to promote sustainable, equitable HWB, providing a foundation for targeted socio-ecological management strategies in fragile regions.

Ensuring compliance with China's “1.8 billion mu”(120 million hectares) cultivated land preservation policy is a fundamental goal of land policy. Northeast China has experienced significant cultivated land expan-sion due to rigorous compensation policies over the past two decades, re-sulting in sustainable increases in grain output. This research employs re-mote sensing data to examine the spatial-temporal pattern and vulnerability of newly increased cultivated land expansion in Northeast China and its potential impact on food security. Results indicate a 3.08% increase in newly increased cultivated land from 2000 to 2020, with the majority located in the Sanjiang Plain's humid area and Inner Mongolia's arid and semiarid regions. with 58.54% of it being at grade 6-10, and the reduced cultivated land all at grade 1. Additionally, 62.84% of the newly increased cultivated land was in ecologically fragile areas, while the rest were in mildly and severely vulnerable areas. Temperature insta-bility was negatively correlated with cultivated land expansion, while grain production was negatively correlated with cultivated land vulnerability. The increase in grain production at the expense of cultivated land ecology is a potential threat to national food security. The vulnerability of cultivated land is negatively and significantly related to grain yield, suggesting an adverse impact on national food security. The poor quality of newly increased cultivated land in Northeast China, characterized by ecological fragility, may lead to short-term gains in grain yield but not guarantee long-term stability. This study found a significant negative correlation between grain yield and cultivated land ecological vulnerability in Northeast China. Thus, protection measures should focus on increasing high-quality and ecologically sound cultivated land to ensure long-term grain production stability. Priority should be given to high-quality and ecologically sound cultivated land for inclusion in high-standard cultivated land construction zones to enhance protection efforts.

Understanding streamflow changes under climate warming is critical for water resource management and disaster prevention in mid- and high-latitude regions. However, the factors driving streamflow changes remain unclear. This study investigated long-term streamflow trends, influencing factors, responses to climate change, and future flood risks in the Nenjiang River Basin, a typical mid-latitude region in Northeast China that is highly sensitive to droughts and floods. Using data from 1960 to 2016, we applied the Mann-Kendall trend and mutation tests and random forest models, and modeled streamflow responses to climate change to explore streamflow-climate interactions. Results showed significant warming (0.24-0.41 degrees C/decade, p < 0.05) and increased winter precipitation (0.77 mm/decade, p < 0.05), accompanied by declining annual and autumn streamflow (-6.03 and -3.62 mm/decade, p < 0.05), with abrupt shifts in 1963, 1996, and 2013. Climate change dominated streamflow changes, although human activities contributed 65% during 2013-2016. Streamflow responded more to precipitation than temperature, except in spring. Extreme floods occurred in 1960, 1998, and 2013. Scenario analysis (2021-2100) showed the highest flood frequency under the high-emission pathway (SSP5-8.5). These findings have crucial implications for water resource management, flood risk control, farming systems, and food security.

This article examines resource use issues and the anthropogenic impact on the environment of companies operating in the mineral resource sector of northern Asian regions. The research aims to comprehensively analyze resource consumption and environmental intensity indicators for leading companies in mineral extraction. A set of indicators reflecting the necessary parameters for mineral resource consumption and pollution intensity due to their production activities is constructed based on quantitative and cost indicators. A pollution intensity assessment is carried out based on environmental intensity indicators. The sectoral and corporate-level indicators are of the most interest in industrial production. The study identified seven critical northern Asian companies that play a decisive role in the mining industry, which were examples for analyzing material resource consumption and production greening pace. Reducing resource use and environmental impact is a crucial task for sustainable development. This study emphasizes the importance of evaluating resource consumption and environmental impact for companies in the mineral resource sector, providing valuable insights for companies, government bodies, and international organizations working towards the region’s sustainable development and efficient resource management.

Ensuring compliance with China's “1.8 billion mu”(120 million hectares) cultivated land preservation policy is a fundamental goal of land policy. Northeast China has experienced significant cultivated land expan-sion due to rigorous compensation policies over the past two decades, re-sulting in sustainable increases in grain output. This research employs re-mote sensing data to examine the spatial-temporal pattern and vulnerability of newly increased cultivated land expansion in Northeast China and its potential impact on food security. Results indicate a 3.08% increase in newly increased cultivated land from 2000 to 2020, with the majority located in the Sanjiang Plain's humid area and Inner Mongolia's arid and semiarid regions. with 58.54% of it being at grade 6-10, and the reduced cultivated land all at grade 1. Additionally, 62.84% of the newly increased cultivated land was in ecologically fragile areas, while the rest were in mildly and severely vulnerable areas. Temperature insta-bility was negatively correlated with cultivated land expansion, while grain production was negatively correlated with cultivated land vulnerability. The increase in grain production at the expense of cultivated land ecology is a potential threat to national food security. The vulnerability of cultivated land is negatively and significantly related to grain yield, suggesting an adverse impact on national food security. The poor quality of newly increased cultivated land in Northeast China, characterized by ecological fragility, may lead to short-term gains in grain yield but not guarantee long-term stability. This study found a significant negative correlation between grain yield and cultivated land ecological vulnerability in Northeast China. Thus, protection measures should focus on increasing high-quality and ecologically sound cultivated land to ensure long-term grain production stability. Priority should be given to high-quality and ecologically sound cultivated land for inclusion in high-standard cultivated land construction zones to enhance protection efforts.

[Objective] Indium resources are an important supporting raw material for the development of China’s strategic emerging industries, and the study of the current status and dynamic evolution of the value flow of indium resources across the whole industry chain is of great strategic significance for the security of China’s indium resources and the sustainable development of its economy. [Methods] Based on the material flow framework of China’s indium resources in 2019, this paper utilizes the value chain analysis method and maps the value flow of China’s indium resources corresponding to the material flow process of indium resources according to the factor price theory, in order to evaluate and analyze the changes of value increase and decrease in the whole industry chain of China’s indium resources. [Results] (1) The total value of China’s indium resources industry chain shows an inverted U-shaped trend of increasing and then decreasing; (2) The stages with the highest value appreciation in the indium value chain are smelting and refining, with value increases of 922% and 1002% respectively. This is attributed to the substantial enhancement of indium resource grade due to the inputs of technology, labor, and energy, and that indium is a by-product metal with its associated zinc metal having relatively low value; (3) Although China is the world’s largest country in terms of indium resources, the indium resource industry chain still relies on imports to sustain its development; (4) Recycling of indium resources can have significant economic value. [Conclusion] Therefore, optimizing the indium resource industry chain, upgrading the production process and technology of high-end indium-containing products, and strengthening the recycling of indium-containing waste products are important ways to increase the value of indium resources in China.

The phenomena of global climate change and comprehensive urban expansion have precipitated significant and unprecedented transformations in landscape patterns. To enhance the assessment of these spatio−temporal changes and their driving forces at a regional level, we developed a comprehensive landscape index (CLI) to quantify these patterns and conducted a detailed analysis of the spatio−temporal variations in Minnesota over the last two decades. Our analysis of the CLI was conducted by examining both its quantitative relationships and spatial distribution patterns. The findings indicate a consistent increase in Minnesota’s CLI over this period, marked by an escalation in landscape fragmentation and diversity, alongside a decline in landscape connectivity. Temporally, the CLI experienced a notable shift in 2010. Spatially, the clustering characteristics of landscape patterns have largely remained stable. Our analysis reveals that the CLI is most sensitive to total population (POP) and gross domestic product (GDP) factors, underscoring the significant impact of human activity on landscape patterns. Notably, the explanatory capacity of interactions between factors is substantially greater than that of individual factors, with the GDP and vegetation structure (VS) interaction demonstrating the greatest influence on the spatial distribution of landscape patterns. This highlights the critical role of the interplay between human socio−economic activity and vegetation coverage in shaping landscape configurations.

The estimation of CO2 emission factors (EFs) is a key step in calculating automobile CO2 emissions. However, city-level research on the integrated estimation of vehicle CO2 EFs under real conditions is insufficient. To enrich the research methods of city-level vehicle CO2 EFs, this paper constructs a vehicle-road-driver three-layer regression model and estimates vehicle CO2 EFs empirical parameters for Tianjin. The results show that the influences of vehicle CO2 EFs can be ranked as follows: engine displacement level (0.740) > total mileage (0.336) > driving habit after the start (-0.072) > vehicle size (0.064). The average empirical parameter of Tianjin's vehicle CO2 EFs is 195.38 g/km. This study can provide a method to estimate vehicle CO2 EFs at city level, enrich the Chinese EFs database in the transport sector, and provide scientific support to formulate integrated low-carbon transport policies.

(1) Background: The article discusses approaches to assessing the ecological acceptability of locating new facilities in areas with special natural resource management status. The presence of natural resources and environmental constraints determine the activity of such facilities. We selected the Central Ecological Zone of the Baikal Natural Territory as the object of study, where the fundamental principle of economic activity is ecological, namely through the prevention of the harmful impacts of production, population, and business on the Lake Baikal ecosystems and the surrounding environment, as well as the restriction of certain types of economic activities and more stringent environmental regulation. The study aims to develop a methodological approach for assessing the ecological acceptability of locating facilities in areas with environmental constraints. (2) Methods: We analyzed the possible risks of locating new facilities based on determining the environmental impact of economic activities and assessing the environmental and associated socio-economic consequences of this impact. We determined the ecological acceptability of existing types of economic activities within the proposed approach based on a multi-criteria analysis, including an assessment of the state and possible changes in pollution flows and natural potential of the territories, the anthropogenic state of natural complexes, external and internal costs, and compliance with the status of natural resource management and regulations. (3) Results: The research results indicate that in most of the Central Ecological Zone of the Baikal Natural Territory, the location of new facilities is acceptable in terms of the balance between ecological capacity, anthropogenic load, and economic damage from pollution. However, when locating, it is necessary to consider restrictions on pollutant and contaminant standards, hydrological risks in certain sections of the coast, and the limited labor resources in the Severo-Baykalsky district. (4) Conclusions: The obtained analytical results can be used to scientifically substantiate the location of new facilities in areas with special natural resource management status since the main criterion postulated is that the anthropogenic load on the territory should not exceed the self-recovery potential of the territory’s natural complex.

Food security is the primary condition for the development of human society. The Great River Basin is very important to ensure the accessibility and availability of agricultural irrigation, which is vital for food security. The Yellow River Basin plays a significant role in China’s food security, with counties serving as key administrative units for guaranteeing this security. This study uses the Yellow River Basin in China as a case study to construct an evaluation index system for county-level food security. It assesses the food security of 22 counties (districts) in Ningxia from 2013 to 2022, applying spatial correlation theories and driving factor analysis methods to explore the factors influencing county-level food security. The results reveal the following: (1) Overall, the food security index in Ningxia has been on the rise, but there is significant internal variation among counties. (2) Spatially, the food security index is relatively low in administrative centers, while the irrigation areas along the Yellow River play a crucial role in maintaining food security, and the overall food security index in the central arid areas is improving. (3) Food security is driven by multiple factors including economic, social, and climatic influences. To enhance food security in the Yellow River Basin, it is necessary to manage land resources systematically, improve grain production technology, and balance ecological protection with food security.

Soil moisture drought is one of the leading hazards causing global crop yield loss. Projecting future changes in soil moisture droughts is therefore critical for informing water management and ensuring food security, but show large uncertainties not only in its frequency but also in the duration and intensity. Here, we found a strong relation between future changes in soil moisture droughts (2070-2100 relative to 1980-2014) and historical global warming rate (1980-2014) emerging from an ensemble of Earth System Models (ESMs) under the business-as-usual scenario. Combining such emergent relation with observed warming rate leads to a shift of Probability density function (PDF) of future soil moisture droughts. Compared to the raw models, the observational constraint reduces the uncertainty of future soil moisture drought by 10-18%. What’s more, a much lower estimate of future drought frequency, duration and intensity is obtained, suggesting that previous studies using the raw models may have overestimated soil moisture droughts.

Lithium demand in China has grown rapidly with the popularization of computer, communication and consumer electronic (3C) products, electric vehicles (EVs), and other products. As an important part of the global processing of lithium products, China still relies on importing a vast majority of raw lithium materials, which significantly affects the supply fulfillment of China's lithium market. Therefore, this study used MFA to analyze the supply and demand characteristics of China's lithium trading market from the trade material flow between 2000 and 2021 and industrial material flow between 2017 and 2021 by quantizing trade and industry data. The results showed that the import of lithium in China is mainly concentrated on lithium carbonate, which is the raw material for power batteries, and the import of lithium accounts for 72.5 % of the consumption in China, about 75.2 % of carbonate lithium is used for batteries. Given the expanding EV market, the demand for lithium in China increases rapidly. In addition to a stable supply of lithium imports, secondary lithium recovered from EoL batteries is expected to become an important lithium supply source.