China Environ Prot (EP) Industry, Technology, Solid Waste Mgt, Liquid Treat: News & Discussions

[JSCh]

World’s largest biomass power plant produces electricity by consuming agricultural residue
By Zhang Huan (People's Daily Online) 17:15, August 02, 2017

The Zhanjiang Biomass Power Plant in China’s Guangdong province, the largest biomass power plant in the world, produces electricity by consuming local biomass fuels, including mallet bark and bagasse, Guangzhou Daily reported.

According to insiders, the power plant can supply over 650 million kilowatt-hours on a yearly basis. Biomass power generation is able to help the plant save more than 280,000 tons of coal, can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 480,000 tons in a year, and achieve zero emission of sulfur dioxide.

In addition, the plant director stressed that the plant spends 250 million RMB ($37.2 million) to 300 million RMB ($44.6 million) annually on local biomass fuels such as bark, saw dust, and chaff. This has boosted local farmers’ income, as a large amount of the capital returns to the farmers who offer the fuels to the plant.

Night view of the plant​

Like many biomass power plants in China, development of the Zhanjiang Power Plant is also affected by the quality, stock, and supply of fuels.

At present, the plant is researching second-generation pure biomass fuels like bamboo reed with relatively low emissions of sulfur dioxide during burning, as well as short growth cycles of only four months. If the fuel could be put into use, it will significantly ease the plight of the plant in terms of securing a stable supply of biomass fuels.

 

[JSCh]

Climate plays role in decline of one of Asia's most critical water resources
August 3, 2017
Kansas State University

Climate variability -- rather than the presence of a major dam -- is most likely the primary cause for a water supply decline in East Asia's largest floodplain lake system, according to a Kansas State University researcher.

The fluvial lake system across China's Yangtze River Plain, which serves nearly half a billion people and is a World Wildlife Fund ecoregion, lost about 10 percent of its water area from 2000-2011, according to Jida Wang, assistant professor of geography. Wang and colleagues published their findings for the lake system's decline in the American Geophysical Union's journal Water Resources Research.

"Many people's first intuition is that the culprit must be the Three Gorges Dam because it impounds so much water in the Yangtze River, but our fingerprinting study undeniably shows that the dam is not the decline's primary cause," Wang said. "Climate variability is the predominant driver of this decadal dynamic."

Wang collaborated with Yongwei Sheng, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yoshihide Wada, of Austria's International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. They found that roughly 80 percent of the observed lake decline is the result of simultaneous climate variability closely related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which has caused droughts and flooding in the region.

"Our findings do not mean the Three Gorges Dam has no impact on the downstream lake system, but the main impact thus far has been limited to the alteration of the lakes' seasonal pattern, rather than an interannual decline," Wang said. "The seasonal impact is particularly evident when the reservoir stores water every fall to prepare for power generation. This lowers the downstream Yangtze River level and drains part of the water budget in the connected lakes.

"Like most reservoirs, the Three Gorges Dam traps sediments in its reservoir, which causes erosion downstream," he said. "But on the positive side, it releases additional water in drier seasons such as winter and spring. Altogether, the dam's impact is much smaller than that of the climate system, at least in the studied decade."

The dam is the world's largest hydroelectric project. Its construction, which started in late 1994, and reservoir water impoundment after mid-2003 uprooted millions of people from thousand-year-old villages upstream and caused major social contention, Wang said.

The contention is not only limited to the upstream region, Wang said. The reservoir has stored 40 gigatons of water since 2003, limiting the amount of natural water flow feeding to the downstream Yangtze River Plain, which is home to thousands of freshwater lakes and vital to China's economy.

"This process, very intriguingly, coincided with the observed lake decline and several extreme droughts across the Yangtze River Plain," Wang said.

Wang and his colleagues also quantified the negative impacts of human water consumption from agricultural, industrial and domestic sectors across the downstream Yangtze River Basin. These impacts are surprisingly comparable to the Three Gorges Dam's impact, Wang said. The dam and human water consumption together comprise 10-20 percent -- or less -- of the decline's factors, while up to another 10 percent of the decline may be caused by a variety of other factors, possibly including other dams, sand mining, soil conservation and urbanization, he said.

"It also is important to recognize that anthropogenic impacts have strengthened in the past couple of decades," Wang said. "Although the Three Gorges Dam already reached its maximal storage capacity in 2010, its induced Yangtze River erosion will continue. This also may come along with increasing human water consumption and trans-basin diversions. We hope our study not only provides an overdue explanation of the past decadal lake decline but also offers scientific guidance for future conservation of this critical fresh water resource."

For their study, Wang and his colleagues used thousands of satellite images from NASA, an advanced hydrological model from the Netherlands, statistical data from the United Nations, and measurements and censuses from several Chinese organizations.

This research was funded by the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat Science Team and a Kansas State University faculty start-up fund.

Journal Reference:

Jida Wang, Yongwei Sheng, Yoshihide Wada. Little impact of the Three Gorges Dam on recent decadal lake decline across China's Yangtze Plain. Water Resources Research, 2017; 53 (5): 3854 DOI: 10.1002/2016WR019817
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Climate plays role in decline of one of Asia's most critical water resources -- ScienceDaily

 

[JSCh]

Warm Periods in the 20th Century Not Unprecedented during the Last 2000 Years
Aug 08, 2017

A great deal of evidence relating to ancient climate variation is preserved in proxy data such as tree rings, lake sediments, ice cores, stalagmites, corals and historical documents, and these sources carry great significance in evaluating the 20th century warming in the context of the last two millennia.

Prof. GE Quansheng and his group from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collected a large number of proxies and reconstructed a 2000-year temperature series in China with a 10-year resolution, enabling them to quantitatively reveal the characteristics of temperature change in China over a common era.

"We found four warm epochs, which were AD 1 to AD 200, AD 550 to AD 760, AD 950 to AD 1300, and the 20th century. Cold periods occurred between AD 210 and AD 350, AD 420 and AD 530, AD 780 and AD 940, and AD 1320 and AD 1900. The temperature amplitude between the warmest and coldest decades was 1.3°C," said Prof. GE.

The team found that the most rapid warming in China occurred over AD 1870–2000, at a rate of 0.56 ± 0.42°C (100 yr)−1; however, temperatures recorded in the 20th century may not be unprecedented in the last 2000 years, as reconstruction showed records for the period from 981 to 1100, and again from 1201 to 1270, were comparable to those of the present warm period, but with an uncertainty of ±0.28°C to ±0.42°C at the 95% confidence interval. Since 1000 CE—the period covering the Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age, and the present warm period—temperature variations over China have typically been in phase with those of the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.

They also detected some interactions between temperature variation and precipitation change. The ensemble means of dryness/wetness spatial patterns in eastern China across all centennial warm periods illustrate a tripole pattern: dry south of 25°N; wet from 25°–30°N; and dry to the north of 30°N. For all cold periods, the ensemble mean drought/flood spatial patterns showed an east to west distribution, with flooding east of 115°E and drought dominant west of 115°E, with the exception of flooding between approximately110°E and 105°E.

The general characteristics of the impacts of climatic change historically were negative in the cold periods and positive in the warm periods. For example, 25 of the 31 most prosperous periods in imperial China during the past 2000 years occurred during periods of warmth or warming. A cooling trend at the centennial scale and social economic decline run hand-in-hand. The rapid development supported by better resources and a better environment in warm periods could lead to an increase in social vulnerability when the climate turns once more to being relatively colder.

"Throughout China’s history," Prof. GE added, "both rulers and the ruled have adopted strategies and policies to cope with climate change, as permitted by the prevailing geography and circumstances of the time."

2000-year temperature reconstruction in China (Image by GE Quansheng)


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Warm Periods in the 20th Century Not Unprecedented during the Last 2000 Years---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Quansheng Ge, Haolong Liu, Xiang Ma, Jingyun Zheng, Zhixin Hao. Characteristics of temperature change in China over the last 2000 years and spatial patterns of dryness/wetness during cold and warm periods, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s00376-017-6238-8

 

[TaiShang]

China restores ecosystem along its longest inland river
Xinhua, August 21, 2017
Xinjiang Region has been restoring the ecosystem along the Tarim River, China's longest inland river, partly through flooding lower reaches which dried up 30 years ago.

In the past 18 years, Xinjiang has infused nearly 6.2 billion cubic meters of water, from lakes and tributaries into the dry trunk stream of lower reaches of the Tarim River, according to the river administration,

Tarim River runs 1,321 kilometers along the rim of the barren Tarim Basin, a sparsely populated area about the size of Poland.

However, excessive irrigation used too much water, which caused the river's lower reaches to run dry in the early 1970s and push the trees to the verge of disappearance.

The government launched a 10.7 billion yuan (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) restoration project in 2000, including taking from surrounding lakes, waterway harnessing, construction of more water storage facilities and underground water development.

The local government also limited industrial and agricultural use of water in cities and counties along the river and returned farm land to grassland.

Data released by Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that around 2,285 square kilometers of vegetation has been restored, and 854 square kilometers of land was no longer desert.

 

[JSCh]

Lhasa to invest total of 50 million yuan on protecting its Lalu wetlands
Source:Global Times Published: 2017/8/27 19:18:40

Local governments in Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region have implemented a series of measures to protect the region's environment with the local capital Lhasa raising some 50 million yuan ($7.5 million) to regulate its Lalu wetlands.

The Lhasa government will take several steps to preserve the Lalu wetlands, a nature reserve that covers 625 hectares of central Lhasa and is home to many migratory waterfowl, thepaper.cn reported on Sunday.

The measures include the relocation of families living in the wetlands, according to the report, with a total of 12 households to be made to leave the area. They will receive job opportunities provided by the city government.

The local government will ask the 601-year old Drepung Temple located in the wetland to dismantle its warehouses and plant fruit trees to recoup any lost income.

Other measures include the restoration of the wetland environment, the prevention of water pollution and a ban on cattle grazing in the area.

Apart from Lhasa, other cities in the Tibet Autonomous Region including Shannan Prefecture, Ali area and Xigaze are also to up their protection of the local ecology.

The State Forestry Administration (SFA) said on Friday that the Tibet regional government has established 61 nature protection zones. The region boasts rich wildlife and mineral resources.

The regional government has banned the exploitation of over 800,000 square kilometers of land, accounting for 70 percent of Tibet's total area, according to the SFA.

In the past decade, Tibet's wetland areas have expanded by 520,000 hectares and its desert area has shrunk by 107,000 hectares.

 

[JSCh]

Public Release: 29-Aug-2017
High-tech electronics made from autumn leaves
New process converts biomass waste into useful electronic devices

American Institute of Physics

Phoenix tree (Paulownia imperialis) leaves.
Credit: US National Park Service, Public Domain

WASHINGTON, D.C., August, 29, 2017 -- Northern China's roadsides are peppered with deciduous phoenix trees, producing an abundance of fallen leaves in autumn. These leaves are generally burned in the colder season, exacerbating the country's air pollution problem. Investigators in Shandong, China, recently discovered a new method to convert this organic waste matter into a porous carbon material that can be used to produce high-tech electronics. The advance is reported in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, by AIP Publishing.

The investigators used a multistep, yet simple, process to convert tree leaves into a form that could be incorporated into electrodes as active materials. The dried leaves were first ground into a powder, then heated to 220 degrees Celsius for 12 hours. This produced a powder composed of tiny carbon microspheres. These microspheres were then treated with a solution of potassium hydroxide and heated by increasing the temperature in a series of jumps from 450 to 800 C.

The chemical treatment corrodes the surface of the carbon microspheres, making them extremely porous. The final product, a black carbon powder, has a very high surface area due to the presence of many tiny pores that have been chemically etched on the surface of the microspheres. The high surface area gives the final product its extraordinary electrical properties.

The investigators ran a series of standard electrochemical tests on the porous microspheres to quantify their potential for use in electronic devices. The current-voltage curves for these materials indicate that the substance could make an excellent capacitor. Further tests show that the materials are, in fact, supercapacitors, with specific capacitances of 367 Farads/gram, which are over three times higher than values seen in some graphene supercapacitors.

A capacitor is a widely used electrical component that stores energy by holding a charge on two conductors, separated from each other by an insulator. Supercapacitors can typically store 10-100 times as much energy as an ordinary capacitor, and can accept and deliver charges much faster than a typical rechargeable battery. For these reasons, supercapacitive materials hold great promise for a wide variety of energy storage needs, particularly in computer technology and hybrid or electric vehicles.

The research, led by Hongfang Ma of Qilu University of Technology, has been heavily focused on looking for ways to convert waste biomass into porous carbon materials that can be used in energy storage technology. In addition to tree leaves, the team and others have successfully converted potato waste, corn straw, pine wood, rice straw and other agricultural wastes into carbon electrode materials. Professor Ma and her colleagues hope to improve even further on the electrochemical properties of porous carbon materials by optimizing the preparation process and allowing for doping or modification of the raw materials.

The supercapacitive properties of the porous carbon microspheres made from phoenix tree leaves are higher than those reported for carbon powders derived from other biowaste materials. The fine scale porous structure seems to be key to this property, since it facilitates contact between electrolyte ions and the surface of the carbon spheres, as well as enhancing ion transfer and diffusion on the carbon surface. The investigators hope to improve even further on these electrochemical properties by optimizing their process and allowing for doping or modification of the raw materials.

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The article, "Supercapacitive performance of porous carbon materials derived from tree leaves," is authored by Hongfang Ma, Zhibao Liu, Xiaodan Wang and Rongyan Jiang. The article appeared in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy August 29, 2017 [DOI: 10.1063/1.4997019] and can be accessed at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4997019.



High-tech electronics made from autumn leaves | EurekAlert! Science News

 

[JSCh]

Forest farm plants seeds of success
By Zheng Jinran | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-30 08:34

China plans to use its experience in green projects like Saihanba- the nation's largest man-made forest - to build similar forest farms in ecologically fragile regions to fight desertification, the National Development and Reform Commission said.

The Saihanba Forest Farm, 150 kilometers from Beijing in Hebei province, forms a natural barrier between the capital and the sandstorms that often blow in from the north. Since foresters began replanting trees, forest coverage in the area has soared from 12 percent in 1962 to 80 percent in 2016.

"The successful practices adopted in Saihanba have provided experience for remote and sparsely populated regions to increase green coverage," He Lifeng, director of the commission, said on Monday at a seminar in Beijing that focused on learning from the Saihanba experience.

In addition to its tree coverage, the forest farm has developed in a sustainable way, with economic growth relying on tourism, tree seeding, wind power generation and logging - with the green sectors bringing in 100 million yuan ($15.1 million) in 2016, outweighing the revenue from past logging operations, data from the commission showed.

So far this year, more than 355,000 tourists have visited Saihanba, according to Tian Yawei, office director of a company promoting Saihanba tourism.

The forest farm also supplies 137 million cubic meters of clean water to areas around Beijing and Tianjin annually, and discharges 550,000 metric tons of oxygen a year.

"Large-scale forest farms are expected to be built in ecological fragile regions," said Zhang Jianlong, head of the State Forestry Administration.

In decades to come, large-scale forest farms may improve the ecological system and provide a better environment for economic growth and people's surroundings, Zhang said.

"The success of forest projects like Saihanba is the major reason China's forest resources are growing faster than any other country's," said Shen Guofang, a forestry expert and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

He said other forest projects could learn from the practices at Saihanba and adopt scientific methods for planting and cutting trees. In addition, governments need to provide support, including preferential policies and financial aid, to guide the sector's healthy growth, he said.

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Also on Saihanba -> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/china-focus-from-a-single-tree-to-a-forest-saihanbas-story.511021/

 

[JSCh]

A system to better protect water bodies
By Jia Shaofeng | China Daily | Updated: 2017-09-08 07:20

Workers remove floating objects from the Xiaojiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, in Chongqing in October. [Photo by Rao Guojun/For China Daily]

The Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms approved a document on Dec 11 last year to implement the river chief system across the country by the end of 2018. The river chief system is aimed at promoting better coordination among government departments to protect the country's water bodies.

It is just one example of President Xi Jinping's environmental protection and eco-civilization philosophy.

China has a long history of water control and management. In ancient times, the administrators appointed special officials in charge of river affairs. During the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) governor of Shu prefecture Li Bing, ordered the building of the Dujiangyan Irrigation System in today's Sichuan province in Southwest China, which is a famous example of water conservancy and could be regarded as the precursor of the river chief system.

The river chief system today is a management system for rivers and lakes and is linked to the accountability system of environment protection and performance evaluations of top officials. It was first implemented in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, in 2007 to solve the algae problem in Taihu Lake. Wuxi municipal authorities made the local chiefs at different levels the river chiefs, too, giving them the full responsibility of water and environmental management. The move proved a big success, as algae pollution is now a thing of the past.

In 2012, the Jiangsu provincial authorities extended the river chief system to cover the entire province. The next year, the Zhejiang provincial authorities implemented it. And in 2015, the Ministry of Water Resources launched pilot river chief system programs nationwide.

Although governments at all levels have made great efforts to control water pollution, the condition of China's water bodies has worsened over the past four decades. The quality of water in one-third of China's rivers is below the third level of the national water quality standard, mainly because local governments have failed to strike the right balance between economic development and environmental protection. Local governments used to sacrifice the environment for economic growth, and water management suffered from a lack of coordination.

Comprehensive water management calls for unified management and control, but in reality environmental protection departments are in charge of tackling water pollution while water resources departments are responsible for managing water bodies. The river chief system is expected to break through this institutional barrier and build a unified management and control system.

At the core of the river chief system is river and lake management, which is the responsibility of government heads. The river chief system will be established at the provincial, municipal, county and township levels, and the government heads of every province, autonomous region and municipality, by default, will be the general river chiefs. Besides, mayors and county heads will be responsible for the protection of water bodies in their administrative regions.

The river chief system is a provincial-level unified management system that will facilitate better coordination among departments and thus strengthen water management. The system also has provisions for involving the public in water management and supervision through modern network technology and reporting platforms, which is an excellent example of China's social management.

By making the Party chief the top water management official, too, in his or her administrative area, the authorities have ensured that the Party's advantages in terms of leadership and foresight are used to better protect the water bodies. Also, the system provides a mechanism for cross-regional water management by clearly defining a river's divisions into different administrative zones.

To fully implement the river chief system nationwide, local authorities have to make sure the system operates as part of the current water management system. And the system would function more smoothly if the river chief directly coordinates with relevant departments to ensure rivers and lakes get full protection against pollutants and polluters.

The author is a researcher at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 

[JSCh]

China spends big to ensure clean winter heating
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-09 09:01:26|Editor: Yang Yi



BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese central and local governments are committed to huge spending in the coming three years to ensure clean winter heating in 12 cities in northern China.

Those cities, including Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan and Tianjin, are in a pilot program for winter heating with clean energy sources, as they have been frequented by smog in winter partly due to over-reliance on coal.

Local finances will contribute about 69.7 billion yuan (11 billion U.S. dollars) to complete clean heating renovation in the next three years, Liu Wei, deputy minister of finance, said at a Friday meeting on the issue.

Financial institutions, companies and other non-government sources will spend more than 200 billion yuan, Liu said.

The pilot program was unveiled in May, with central finance to provide between 500 million yuan to 1 billion yuan to each city.

The program came after this year's government work report said that China will address pollution caused by coal, with measures including clean winter heating in the north and replacing coal with electricity and natural gas in more than 3 million households.

At the meeting, pilot cities were asked to seek new ways of capital input, encourage more private funds into the pilots, and coordinate the prices for electricity, natural gas and heating.

 

[JSCh]

Air pollution cuts three years off lifespans in Northern China
September 11, 2017

There are currently an estimated 4.5 billion people around the world exposed to levels of particulate air pollution that are at least twice what the World Health Organization (WHO) considers safe. Yet, the impact of sustained exposure to pollution on a person's life expectancy has largely remained a vexingly unanswered question—until now.

A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that a Chinese policy is unintentionally causing people in northern China to live 3.1 years less than people in the south due to air pollution concentrations that are 46 percent higher. These findings imply that every additional 10 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate matter pollution (PM10) reduces life expectancy by 0.6 years. The elevated mortality is entirely due to an increase in cardiorespiratory deaths, indicating that air pollution is the cause of reduced life expectancies to the north.

"These results greatly strengthen the case that long-term exposure to particulates air pollution causes substantial reductions in life expectancy. They indicate that particulates are the greatest current environmental risk to human health, with the impact on life expectancy in many parts of the world similar to the effects of every man, woman and child smoking cigarettes for several decades," says study co-author Michael Greenstone, the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School. "The histories of the United States, parts of Europe, Japan and a handful of other countries teach us that air pollution can be reduced, but it requires robust policy and enforcement."

The study exploits China's Huai River policy, which provided free coal to power boilers for winter heating to people living north of the river and provided almost no resources towards heating south of the river. The policy's partial provision of heating was implemented because China did not have enough resources to provide free coal nationwide. Additionally, since migration was greatly restricted, people exposed to pollution were generally not able to migrate to less polluted areas. Together, the discrete change in policy at the river's edge and the migration restrictions provide the basis for a powerful natural experiment that offers an opportunity to isolate the impact of sustained exposure to particulates air pollution from other factors that affect health.

"Unveiling this important information helps build the case for policies that ultimately serve to improve the lives of the Chinese people and the lives of those globally who suffer from high levels of air pollution," says study co-author Maigeng Zhou, deputy director of the National Center for Chronic and Non-communicable Disease Control and Prevention of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, the study provides solutions to several challenges that have plagued previous research. In particular, prior studies: 1) rely on research designs that may be unlikely to isolate the causal effects of air pollution; 2) measure the effect of pollution exposure for a relatively short period of time (e.g., weekly or annually), failing to shed light on the effect of sustained exposure; 3) examine settings with much lower pollution concentrations than those currently faced by billions of people in countries, including China and India, leaving questions about their applicability unanswered; 4) measure effects on mortality rates but leave the full loss of life expectancy unanswered.

"The study's unique design provides solutions to several challenges that have been difficult to solve," says co-author Maoyong Fan, an associate professor at Ball State University. "The Huai River policy also provides a research design that can be used to explore a variety of other questions about the long-run consequences of exposure to high levels of pollution."

The study follows on an earlier study, conducted by some of the same researchers, which also utilized the unique Huai River design. Despite using data from two separate time periods, both studies revealed the same basic relationship between pollution and life expectancy. However, the new study's more recent data covers a population eight times greater than the previous one. It also provides direct evidence on smaller pollution particles that are more often the subject of environmental regulations (PM10).

"This new study provides an important opportunity to assess the validity of our previous findings. The striking finding is that both studies produced remarkably similar results, increasing our confidence that we have uncovered the causal relationship between particulates air pollution and life expectancy," says Avraham Ebenstein, a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Economics and Management at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an author of both studies.

Further, since the earlier paper, China has increased its efforts to confront its air pollution challenge. China is switching its primary source of heating from coal-fired boilers to gas-fired or electric units, and has shut down many polluting plants. The consequence is that particulate air pollution in some of China's most polluted cities, such as Beijing, has improved significantly.

"Our findings show that these changes will bring about significant health benefits for the Chinese people in the long run," says co-author Guojun He, an assistant professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "If all of China were brought into compliance with its Class I standards for PM10 (40 μg/m^3), more than 3.7 billion life-years will be saved."

Broader Implications—Introducing the Air Quality-Life Index (AQLI)

Importantly, the results from this paper can be generalized to quantify the number of years that air pollution reduces lifespans around the globe—not just in China. Specifically, Greenstone and his colleagues at EPIC used the finding that an additional 10 micrograms per cubic meter of PM10 reduces life expectancy by 0.6 years to develop a new pollution index, the Air Quality-Life Index (AQLI). The index allows users to better understand the impact of air pollution on their lives by calculating how much longer they would live if the pollution in the air they breathe were brought into compliance with national or WHO standards. Further, it serves as an important complement to the frequently used Air Quality Index (AQI), which is a complicated function of air pollution concentrations and does not map directly to long-term human health.

"The AQLI uses the critical data and information gathered from our China research and applies it to every country, allowing the billions of people around the world who are exposed to high air pollution levels to estimate how much longer they would live if they breathed cleaner air," says Greenstone.

More information: Avraham Ebenstein el al., "New evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China's Huai River Policy," PNAS (2017). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1616784114


https://phys.org/news/2017-09-air-pollution-years-lifespans-northern.html

 

[JSCh]

Public Release: 8-Sep-2017
Who is the chief culprit of dust concentrations over East Asia?
Science China Press

Gobi Desert was taken from Ejin Banner in September 2009 (Left); Taklimakan Desert was taken in July 2005 (Right).
Credit: ©Science China Press

Dust, one of the major aerosol species contributing to the global aerosol burden and optical depth, is a very active component in the physical, chemical and biogeochemical cycle of the Earth system. In addition, dust aerosols induce tremendous adverse effects on the social and economic development. A case study for the dust storm in Beijing indicated that total economic loss due to dust storm ranging from 2,268.5 million RMB (US$273.3 million) to 5,796 million RMB (US$698.3 million). Increased concentrations of particulate matter in the atmosphere during dust storms can also lead to acute damage to respiratory systems and long-term damage such as desert pneumoconiosi.

Located in the central Tarim Basin (Figure 1a), the Taklimakan Desert (TD) covers an area of approximately 337,600 km2, making it the largest desert in China and the second largest drifting desert in the world. The TD has long been regarded as the major source of dust concentrations over East Asia. Nevertheless, researches have underestimated the importance of the Gobi Desert (GD) playing in the contribution to the East Asian dust concentrations and there are still a great gap existing in the related studying on the GD. There are large uncertainties in the quantification of the contributions of the TD and GD dust to the total dust concentrations over East Asia.

A latest research "Comparison of dust emissions, transport, and deposition between the Taklimakan Desert and Gobi Desert from 2007 to 2011" published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences 2017. This research is done by Jianping Huang research group at Lanzhou University in China (the first author Siyu Chen is the team member). The quantitative differences in dust emissions, transport and wet/dry deposition over the TD and the GD in different seasons from 2007 to 2011 based on the WRF-Chem model combined with satellite retrievals were compared in the study. Authors further comprehensively analyzed reasons for these differences.

The research found that dust emissions, uplift, and long-range transport related to these two dust source regions were markedly different due to divergences in topography, elevation, thermal conditions, and atmospheric circulation. Although the TD is of the greatest dust emission capacity over East Asia, the GD is the major contribution to the East Asian dust concentrations rather than the TD. To be more specific, the TD is located in the Tarim Basin and surrounded by mountains on three sides. Furthermore, the dominant surface wind direction is eastward and the average wind speed at high altitudes is relatively small over the TD. As a result, the TD dust particles are not easily transported outside the Tarim Basin, such that most of the dust particles are re-deposited after uplift, at a total deposition rate of about 40 g m-2. It is only when the TD dust particles are uplifted above 4 km, and entrained in westerlies that they begin to undergo a long-range transport.

Compared with the TD, the topography of the GD is relatively flat, and at a high elevation, and the area is under the influence of two jet streams at high altitudes, resulting in high wind speeds in the upper atmosphere. Deep convective mixing enables the descending branch of jet streams to continuously transport momentum downward to the mid-troposphere, leading to enhanced wind speeds in the lower troposphere over the GD which favors the vertical uplift of the GD dust particles. Therefore, the GD dust was very likely to be transported under the effect of strong westerly jets, and thus played the most important role in contributing to dust concentrations in East Asia. Approximately 35% and 31% of dust emitted from the GD transported to remote areas in East Asia in spring and summer, respectively.

The research provides a new perspective based on the previous work. It emphasizes that the GD dust should pay attention to the responsibility in the dust concentrations and the related climate effect induced by dust over East Asia. These studies also appeal for the desertification control in the GD regions.

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See the article: Chen S Y, Huang J P, Li J X, Jia R, Jiang N X, Kang L T, Ma X J, Xie T T. 2017. Comparison of dust emissions, transport, and deposition between the Taklimakan Desert and Gobi Desert from 2007 to 2011. Science China Earth Sciences, 60: 1338-1355, doi: 10.1007/s11430-016-9051-0

http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCES/60/7/10.1007/s11430-016-9051-0?slug=fulltext



Who is the chief culprit of dust concentrations over East Asia? | EurekAlert! Science News

 

[JSCh]

China joins action on desertification
(China Daily) 09:31, September 16, 2017

(File photo)​

China will join hands with countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative to fight against desertification, further strengthen technological cooperation and promote exchanges to boost green economies in the region.

A mechanism for cooperation was launched during the 13th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, which ended on Friday in Ordos in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

China will work with countries including Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia to explore an effective long-term mechanism, according to Pan Yingzhen, director of the Desertification Control Bureau under the State Forestry Administration.

Pan said that a group of international organizations will also be invited to engage with or support the mechanism, including the UNCCD Secretariat and United Nations Environment Programme.

Zhang Jianlong, director of the administration, said the mechanism will help members cooperate on financing, sharing information, professional training and learning from each other's projects.

"It shows China's wisdom of absorbing international experience in prevention and control in order to promote sustainable development," Zhang said. "We will devote ourselves to desertification prevention and control, and make contributions to desertification prevention and control in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative."

In the past five years, 29.8 million hectares of desert in the country have turned green, and a total of 11.6 billion trees have been planted, according to the administration.

"The mechanism will promote fair and impartial development of UN member states. Through introducing green development concepts and technologies, it will deepen exchanges in the economy and other fields among countries involved in the Belt and Road," said Monique Barbut, UNCCD's executive secretary.

A total of 112 countries have joined the campaign to make the UN's Sustainable Development Goal of achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030 a national target for action, including Brazil, China, India, Nigeria and Russia.

The Ordos Declaration was also announced on Friday night, which included three new proposals related to drought, participation of women and youth, as well as desertification and migration.

"Those three topics were proposed for the first time in the UNCCD. Moreover, in the declaration, the Chinese mode of fighting against desertification through introducing a green economy for sustainable development and stimulating local people's enthusiasm to join in the campaign are widely recognized by the world," said Jia Xiaoxia, deputy director of the Desertification Control Bureau.

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The Land Degradation Neutrality Fund was also launched during the conference, with an initial target size of $300 million. The fund is a first-of-its-kind investment, leveraging public money to raise private capital for sustainable land management and landscape restoration activities worldwide.

 

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New technology in China turns desert into land rich with crops
CGTN America Published on Sep 13, 2017

Drawing a roadmap to combat the spread of deserts worldwide. It’s the mission of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in the Inner Mongolian city of Erdos. The host country, China, was praised for a law it passed in 2002 -- the world's first integrated law dedicated to combating desert expansion. With this goal in mind, China has carried out several projects that have been successful, including at one desert in northern China. CGTN's Frances Kuo reports.

 

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Monday, September 25, 2017, 10:30
A green oasis raising incomes
Monday, September 25, 2017, 10:30 By Yang Wanli

A burgeoning forestry sector is helping to provide jobs for people battling 'cancer of the land', as Yang Wanli reports from Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

The Kubuqi Desert in Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, is rapidly becoming covered with trees. (ZOU HONG / CHINA DAILY)

Life in a desert is the polar opposite of depictions in movies and photo collections in which groups of merchants swathed in white robes sit on the backs of camels and sway gracefully back and forth across golden sand dunes.

In most instances, living in a desert means a constant struggle against hunger and poverty, maybe for an entire lifetime. However, in one small village in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in North China, the people of the desert have refused to accept this fate. In the past 40 years they have achieved a mission impossible - "greening" the desert to make it habitable for generations to come.

Li Hua is village head of Udon Qaidam in Ejin Horo Banner, Ordos. The 55-year-old has never forgotten how tough life was during his childhood on the edge of the Maowusu Desert. In the 1970s, nearly all of the village land - 1,130 hectares - was covered by sand. Just 8 percent was green and suitable for cultivation.

The residents found it difficult to develop any form of agriculture, so their staple foodstuffs were powdered corn and sweet potatoes. No one in Udon Qaidam ate cucumbers or cabbages until the early 1990s.

Baskets made from salix are popular with tourists from overseas. (ZOU HONG / CHINA DAILY)

A harsh life

In the 1970s, strong winds hit the village frequently. "Most of the cottages were about 3 meters high. Sometimes, after a windy night, we couldn't even open the door because it was blocked by the sand outside," Li said. "It was hard to feed a family, not to mention earn any money. I have a younger sister and a brother, and they wore clothes passed down from me. None of us had shoes."

More than half the village's residents gradually moved to other places, but Li's father - Li Mingliang - insisted on staying. "My father was the head of the village. He said that if we all left, the only area of vegetation would rapidly disappear," Li Hua recalled.

In the 1970s, Li Mingliang led a tree-growing drive among the villagers, using a national policy that provided subsidies of 30 to 50 yuan for every 0.01 hectares planted with trees. By 1984, 24 percent of the land had been reclaimed from the desert and was green with vegetation.

10,000 yuan, amount generated for each family by sales of pine saplings last year

In 2000, the villagers elected Li Hua to succeed his father as village head. He immediately started using innovative measures to expand the area of greenery and raise people's incomes. "Used rationally, trees and other desert plants can also be turned into sustainable resources," he said. In recent years, he has continued to expand the area of greenery and has brought in a number of companies that process the plants into raw materials for furniture and other items.

In 2005, Li Hua launched a pilot project to plant 0.6 hectares of Mongolian Scots pine trees. By 2012, the trees, which had grown to 3 meters, were sold for 200 yuan each. The sale generated 1 million yuan, a sum the villagers found hard to comprehend.

Between 2000 and 2008, the annual per capita income in the village was 1,300 yuan. By last year, the figure had soared to 13,000 yuan, and the forest covered 75 percent of the land, while grass covered 95 percent.

Li Hua has a bigger plan for next year; he wants to consolidate each family's land rights and attract companies to use it further. The villagers will become shareholders in, and workers for, the companies.

"I have a mission to make our people believe that every single effort made on the land will earn a payback. I will help them to understand that farming can also lead to a prosperous life," he said.

The work in Udon Qaidam is a microcosm of China's long battle against desertification, which is often referred to as "cancer of the earth".

Now, the battle is becoming a challenge for many countries and regions across the globe.

In 1994, the General Assembly of the UN adopted the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

As a signatory, China has been active in the implementation of its obligations and has adopted a series of measures to prevent and control desertification.

On Sept 16, at the end of the 13th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification, held in Ordos, China was recognized as a model in the fight against desertification.

Workers pick watermelons in the desert. (ZOU HONG / CHINA DAILY)

According to statistics from the State Forestry Administration's latest national survey, the area of desertified land fell by 12,120 square kilometers between 2009 and 2014, while the area of sandy land shrank by 9,902 sq km during the same period.

The administration's data also shows that the number of people living below the poverty line in 12 Northern provinces and regions, including Inner Mongolia, has fallen to 13.42 million from 47.11 million in 2012.

According to Liu Dongsheng, the administration's deputy director, between the 1970s and the 1990s, the area of desertified land in China grew by 10,400 sq km every year. However, during the past decade, it has shrunk by 2,424 sq km every year. "It is a historic change from 'people giving way to sand' to 'sand giving way to greenery'," he said.

Opportunities

In most areas of Inner Mongolia, sand control now not only produces green land and a better environment for local people, but also brings more job opportunities and higher incomes.

In the past 40 years, about 560 hectares of Mongolian Scots pine have been planted in the XiaoHoro Operating Area on the northeastern edge of the Maowusu desert. In 2000, the local people developed a seedling industry based on the pine. By last year, more than 216 million saplings were grown in the area, generating income of 10,000 yuan for every family.

In recent years, Salix, a type of willow that is grown in the desert, has attracted growing investment. Providing it is pruned every four years, the plant, which is composed of rich, tough fibers, has the ability to survive for many decades.

Without pruning, it dies gradually.

People in Ejin Horo Banner have explored comprehensive use of the plant. The branches are the main area of interest. They are subjected to a range of procedures, including peeling, rolling and drying, and then compacted to produce tough construction materials.

The development of salix processing has gone through three stages, according to Li Yi, general manager of Inner Mongolia Tsinghua Salix Industry Engineer Technology, a company that focuses on processing the plant into high value-added commercial products.

In early years, salix branches were used to make craft items, such as small baskets. However, since the 1990s, the plant has mainly been used to make furniture, such as closets, beds, tables and bookcases.

"However, the profit margin is still very narrow; within 3 to 5 percent," Li Yi said. In 2007, the company developed a method of processing salix to produce high-density wood for use in construction. The wood is also waterproof, anti-corrosion and flame retardant, so instead of just being used to make furniture, it can be utilized as an structural material for buildings.

In October last year, construction began on the company's first production line for the new form of salix, and the first products went on the market in June. About 600 new jobs will be created in the coming months, and the new industry is expected to generate 25 million yuan (US$3.7 million) a year.

During the conference in Ordos earlier this month, a large number of overseas visitors watched demonstrations of the "special wood" and discussed future cooperation with Li Yi.

"The new technology is now under intellectual property protection. We have a big dream, which is not going to stop at sand control, but will improve the lives of local people through the restoration of the ecological environment," he said.

 

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Drinking water safety issues in China's rural areas basically solved: white paper
Xinhua | Updated: 2017-09-29 15:21

BEIJING - Drinking water safety issues in China's rural areas have been basically solved, said a white paper, titled "Development of China's Public Health as an Essential Element of Human Rights," released by the State Council Information Office Friday.

From 2006 to 2010, the investment in safe drinking water projects in rural areas reached 105.3 billion yuan (15.87 billion U.S. dollars), providing safe drinking water to 212 million rural residents in 190,000 administrative villages, according to the document.

From 2011 to 2015, 121.5 billion yuan from the central government and over 60 billion yuan from local governments were appropriated for safe drinking water projects in rural areas, figures from the white paper showed.

By the end of 2016, the safe drinking water monitoring covered over 85 percent of rural villages, and up to 82 percent of rural residents enjoy centralized water supply, it said.

The state has allocated funds to areas with particular difficulties, and raised the subsidy standards, such as by appropriating 495 million yuan to provide safe drinking water to over 1,400 monasteries, 32,300 monks and nuns and 60,000 other residents with temporary needs in the Tibet Autonomous Region, it added.