The Ecological and Social Effects of Eco-Environmental Policies on Grassland Rehabilitation in China

Grassland degradation and desertification in China have challenged the sustainability of these invaluable natural resources. Since the beginning of 21st century, the Chinese government has set a lot of eco-environmental policies and programs to deal with these problems. To illustrate the effectiveness of these policies and programs in ecological and socio-economic dimensions, a quantitative assessment was conducted through collecting and analyzing the up-to-date information and data in this study. The results indicate that the ecological restoration projects facilitated by the grassland eco-environment policies and programs such as “Returning to Grassland by Excluding Grazing (RGEG)”, “Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Control Engineering (BTSSCE)” and “Comprehensive Management of Karst Areas in Southwestern China (CMKASC)” have greatly improved the grassland eco-environment and promoted the local livelihood at the same time. These policies and programs should be sustained for further improvement of grassland eco-environments in China. There is the call for more fully integrated and more relevant studies to provide effective guidance to rationalize the sustainable grassland management strategies in China

The effect of cultivation methods on enhancing the methane oxidation capacity of ceramsite

AbstractInoculated with compost from methane oxidation habitats, the differences of methane oxidation capacity were compared and investigated after suspended-growth process and attached-growth process. The result showed that the ceramsite-compost matrix was formed in short time (3d) under the suspended growth condition and its methane oxidation capacity increased remarkably. The peak methane oxidation rate was 52.7g CH4·m-3·h-1 after suspended-growth process. However, the methane oxidation capacity of ceramsite was lower after attached-growth process with the peak methane oxidation rate of 13.5g CH4·m-3·h-1

Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Stocks and Their Relationship with Plant and Soil Dynamics of Degraded and Artificial Restoration Grasslands in an Alpine Region

Land disturbances and management approaches can significantly alter grassland soils. Therefore, understanding the carbon and nitrogen storage accompanying plant and soil physical and chemical properties due to anthropogenic disturbance and different management strategies is important. In our study, we investigated carbon and nitrogen storage in artificial grasslands with different durations of restoration and native grasslands with different levels of degradation. We found that total carbon and nitrogen were significantly higher five years after restoration than after seven and nine years, but decreased due to grassland degradation. Furthermore, soil carbon and nitrogen had a close relationship with plant and soil factors, as reflected by a correlation index. The above-mentioned results indicate that artificial grasslands can be used as an effective method to restore “black-beach” soil grassland. In the long term, however, human intervention should be implemented to prevent the degradation of artificial grasslands

Degradation of Grassland Ecosystems in the Developing World: The Tragedy of Breaking Coupled Human-Natural Systems

Since Hardin (1968) published his famous theory Tragedy of the Commons supported by examples showing that communal grasslands can be easily overgrazed when herdsman increase their herd numbers, a lot of research has supported the viewpoint that rangeland degradation and desertification in much of the pastoral areas in the developing world are caused by overgrazing (Arnalds and Archer 2000). With increasing focus on change at the global scale, many scientists, guided by the disequilibrium theory, hypothesized that climatic variability and change rather than overgrazing is associated with rangeland degradation. We argue that neither overgrazing nor climate change can alone explain the degradation of rangelands worldwide. In contrast, failure to reconcile emergent issues at the interface between the ecological, economic and social aspects has repeatedly resulted in management and policy actions that do not achieve the objectives of optimizing yield of rangeland products in a sustainable manner. The coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) approach proposed by Liu et al. (2007) can be used to identify applicable approaches for helping pastoral societies worldwide cope with global change by facilitating effective collaboration among social scientists, bio/physical scientists, practitioners, managers, and users to protect and sustain pastoral environments (Dong et al. 2011)

Teaching case article : Sowingo : Promoting Innovations in Dental Office Inventory Management

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, 20:1, 23-35, available online on Dec. 20, 2018 at DOI: 10.1080/15228053.2018.1557881Unhappy with erroneous and inefficient inventory management affecting his dental practice, Dr. Bhatti, a seasoned dentist, founded Sowingo in 2012 to create a solution tailor-made for busy health practitioners. Since then, the company enjoyed a few years’ unfettered monopoly and grew to have six employees with over a 100 clients under its belt. Despite offering an innovative inventory management system in the market, however, Sowingo is challenged to continue its growth, as potential clients are unwilling to forego the error-prone and manual way of managing inventory. What will be the next strategic direction for Sowingo