Detecting One-Hundred-Year Environmental Changes in Western China Using Seven-Year Repeat Photography

Due to its diverse, wondrous plants and unique topography, Western China has drawn great attention from explorers and naturalists from the Western World. Among them, Ernest Henry Wilson (1876 –1930), known as ‘Chinese’ Wilson, travelled to Western China five times from 1899 to 1918. He took more than 1,000 photos during his travels. These valuable photos illustrated the natural and social environment of Western China a century ago. Since 1997, we had collected E.H. Wilson's old pictures, and then since 2004, along the expedition route of E.H. Wilson, we took 7 years to repeat photographing 250 of these old pictures. Comparing Wilson's photos with ours, we found an obvious warming trend over the 100 years, not only in specific areas but throughout the entire Western China. Such warming trend manifested in phenology changes, community shifts and melting snow in alpine mountains. In this study, we also noted remarkable vegetation changes. Out of 62 picture pairs were related to vegetation change, 39 indicated vegetation has changed to the better condition, 17 for degraded vegetation and six for no obvious change. Also in these photos at a century interval, we found not only rapid urbanization in Western China, but also the disappearance of traditional cultures. Through such comparisons, we should not only be amazed about the significant environmental changes through time in Western China, but also consider its implications for protecting environment while meeting the economic development beyond such changes

Geographies of Social Capital: Catastrophe Experience, Risk Perception, and the Transformation of Social Space in Postearthquake Resettlements in Sichuan, China

This article explores the relationships between catastrophe experience and risk perception, social interaction, and household response to future catastrophes. Our main argument recognizes the geographical context in which social capital is formed and reproduced. Social relationships and norms adjust to the social landscape, which can be transformed by the spatial consequences of natural catastrophes. We therefore argue that sources of household resilience could be derived from the spatial transformation of social practices and not necessarily from catastrophe experience and risk perception directly. A case study was conducted in two postearthquake rural communities in China. The inquiry is primarily based on a household survey of 371 local residents and is further supported by an analysis of additional in-depth interviews and a review of key changes in the neighborhoods under study. The findings challenge the assumption that catastrophe experience and risk perception are related to residents' intentions to prepare for future catastrophes. Nonetheless, the relationship might be mediated by social relationships and social norms. Catastrophe experience and risk perception can be construed as a geographical contextual factor. Further analysis provides one example of such a factor: The spatial features of postearthquake resettlements have increased the proximity between residents. This shift facilitates neighborly interaction and risk communication across a neighborhood. We discuss the nonlinear, dynamic relationships between the variables examined and the grounding of social capital in space.postprin

Land Use and Land Cover Changes, and Environment and Risk Evaluation of Dujiangyan City (SW China) Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Understanding of the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) change, its transitions and Landscape risk (LR) evaluation in earthquake-affected areas is important for planning and urban sustainability. In the present study, we have considered Dujiangyan City and its Environs (DCEN), a seismic-prone area close to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (8.0 Mw) during 2007–2018. Five different multi-temporal data sets for the years 2007, 2008, 2010, 2015, and 2018 were considered for LULC mapping, followed by the maximum likelihood supervised classification technique. The individual LULC maps were further used in four time periods, i.e., 2007–2018, 2008–2018, 2010–2018, and 2015–2018, to evaluate the Land Use and Land Cover Transitions (LULCT) using combined remote sensing and GIS (Geographical Information System). Furthermore, multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) techniques were applied for LR mapping. The results of the LULC change data indicate that built-up, agricultural area, and forest cover are the prime categories that had been changed by the natural and anthropogenic activities. LULCT, along with multi-parameters, are suggested to avoid development in fault-existing areas that are seismically vulnerable for future landscape planning in a sustainable manner

Beyond repair : state-society relations in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

textMy dissertation offers insight into the political epistemology of the Chinese Communist Party and state on the basis of their activities during the post-2008 Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction. By “political epistemology,” I mean how the Party thinks about the nature of politics, including but not limited to the role of the state in the economy. An important facet of this approach is taking seriously the CCP’s distinctive manner of thinking, writing, and talking about politics that is too often dismissed as empty jargon that means little in post-Mao China. I show how a Maoist conception of politics remains at the bedrock of how the CCP understands its own political identity and actions. Certainly, many of the salient features of Maoism have been discarded, such as the emphasis on class struggle, continuous revolution, and the role of the masses in political movements. Despite these trends toward de-politicization and technocracy, the Party’s confidence in the rationality of its planning apparatus and in its ability to mobilize politically to achieve the ends of market construction and biopolitical social transformation constitutes what I call Maoist neo-developmentalism. Each of my empirical case chapters examines a localized combination of post-disaster reconstruction with a national strategy for long-term, “great leap” development. Thus, each chapter traces how the Party’s plans to capitalize the countryside - by way of urbanization, tourism, and ecology – have become stuck in transitional processes. The spectacular market transitions and transformations envisioned by Party leaders became cycles of state investment in local economies that only function by virtue of continued state involvement. The Party’s massive expenditures of maintaining the appearance of success, however, generated local resentment at perceived waste, indifference, and corruption. Each case chapter shows evidence not so much of social resistance to the state (although of course that happened, too) but an intimate negotiation between state and society of high expectations, broken promises, and frustrations. I argue that these “perforations” deep within the tissue of the state-society relationship only make sense when viewed from the context of a Maoist social contact in which the Party’s legitimacy depends on its perceived ability to serve the people.Governmen

汶川地震の前後における県の人口-経済-空間的な都市化の総合分析

Urbanization, as one of the most important indicators to evaluate the development level of city, usually means huge migrant of population from rural area into the urban area, secondary and tertiary industry replace the primary industry as the major economic industry, large land transfer into built-up area. This study aims to explore the temporal-spacial distribution and difference of urbanization and its subsystems before and after Wenchuan earthquake (Richter scale 8.0) in county scale. Based on the connotation of population urbanization, economy urbanization, space urbanization, we could deepen the knowledge of urbanization by comprehensive analysis. In particular, a comprehensive analysis of urbanization development under the context of destructive earthquakes is more conducive to enriching our understanding of the objective rules of urbanization development under extreme circumstances.北九州市立大

Multi-objective consideration of earthquake resilience in the built environment: the case of Wenchuan earthquake

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake is one of the largest and deadliest events of the last century, both in terms of victims and seismically-triggered geo-environmental hazards. The combined effects resulting from the seismic activity of 2008 led to major damages in several domains of the local society, including the built environment and the social component, highlighting the extensive gap related to resilience measures aimed at both prevention and recovery in case of a disruption. Thus, it is imperative for the development of a multi-objective and comprehensive formulation for resilience combining holistically all the diverse facets of a local community. To this regard, this paper presents a wide-spectrum analysis and preliminary findings, being structured in working threads specifically addressed in the context of an ongoing project (REACH). The focus is on the built environment damage analysis following the field work which took place in December 2016 in the Wenchuan territory, involving 3D laser scanning activity of 7 high-risk areas and the related audit and preliminary structural analysis of the damage. As a result, a set of external and internal factors have been identified as possible key causes of the surveyed damages. Of these, external factors mainly relate to environmental and hazardous properties, whereas internal indicators involve structural features as well as building regulations

Mandate of Heaven: An Analysis of China\u27s Government Disaster Response and CCP Performance Legitimacy

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the Chinese government’s disaster response over the past two decades, analyze any patterns or recurring management behaviors, and understand the government’s overall emergency response capability. Disaster response is one area that reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to govern and exhibit performance legitimacy. As an authoritarian regime, the CCP relies on repression and performance to maintain its authority, especially so when national disasters occur. During times of crisis, the CCP is expected to maintain control and minimize potentially negative consequences. Not doing so results in a potential image crisis and loss of legitimacy. The cases studied in this thesis were the 2005 Songhua River benzene spill, the 2008 winter storms, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the 2015 Tianjin warehouse explosions, and the 2016 June and July floods. The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake was the deadliest disaster in a generation and provides the most thorough example to investigate China’s government disaster response capabilities. Two of these crises were industrial chemical accidents near or in major Chinese cities. The remaining two were weather disasters spread over a large area that required a far-reaching and coordinated government response across multiple provinces. Each of these sets displays a type of national disaster that China experiences regularly. In conclusion, the investigation makes two conclusions about the government’s disaster response capabilities. First, the central government is able to make extensive use of its overall authority and hierarchical structure to mobilize state resources on a massive scale. This includes the CCP’s control of the People’s Liberation Army and state emergency personnel, the government’s economic authority to impose immediate regulatory measures, and ability to gather and distribute physical resources. Second, the CCP seeks to avert an image crisis to maintain a veneer of performance legitimacy. Two common tactics are repressing investigative journalism and jailing critics while molding an image of a paternalistic and protecting state through compassionate moral performance. However, the necessity for this last conclusions hints at why such practices are necessary in the first place. The CCP’s rush for economic growth, lack of accountability, and propensity for corruption among other things are the very factors that have allowed disasters to become crises. Extreme measures are necessitated because the system the Party has built is prone to crisis. Without fundamental change, the CCP will continue facing such crises in the foreseeable future