Can annual land use plan control and regulate construction land growth in China?

Annual land use plan (ALUP) stands for the quota allocation of land converted to non-agricultural use, which has been in place since 1987 in China. Although the ALUP has been implemented for more than 30 years and has played an important role in China’s non-agricultural land growth management, little has been done to assess the effect of its implementation. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effect of the ALUP on controlling the growth of construction land in China. The province-level data on land use in China during the period of 2006–2013 were collected and then analyzed using panel data model. The results show that (1) the ALUP can effectively curb construction land growth, and the construction land decreased about 1721 ha with a 1% increment of the intensity of growth management. Construction land growth is closely related to the implementation intensity of the ALUP, which decreases 30,892 ha under strict implementation but increases an extra 181,451 ha with relaxed implementation; (2) the implementation effect of the ALUP shows significant differences between provinces, and the provinces of northwestern and eastern China show better performance than provinces from the southwest and central regions. National development strategy and region’s differentiation land policy may have contributed to this phenomenon; (3) taking both the goal achievement and effectiveness into account, the implementation of the ALUP is described as effective though not completely successful; and (4) for more efficiency and success, the study proposes some suggestions on improving policy implementation in the future

Environmental impact assessments of the Three Gorges Project in China: issues and interventions

The paper takes China's authoritative Environmental Impact Statement for the Yangzi (Yangtze) Three Gorges Project (TGP) in 1992 as a benchmark against which to evaluate emerging major environmental outcomes since the initial impoundment of the Three Gorges reservoir in 2003. The paper particularly examines five crucial environmental aspects and associated causal factors. The five domains include human resettlement and the carrying capacity of local environments (especially land), water quality, reservoir sedimentation and downstream riverbed erosion, soil erosion, and seismic activity and geological hazards. Lessons from the environmental impact assessments of the TGP are: (1) hydro project planning needs to take place at a broader scale, and a strategic environmental assessment at a broader scale is necessary in advance of individual environmental impact assessments; (2) national policy and planning adjustments need to react quickly to the impact changes of large projects; (3) long-term environmental monitoring systems and joint operations with other large projects in the upstream areas of a river basin should be established, and the cross-impacts of climate change on projects and possible impacts of projects on regional or local climate considered. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.Xibao Xu, Yan Tan, Guishan Yan

Laboratory study of gas permeability and cleat compressibility for CBM/ECBM in Chinese coals

Coal permeability is regarded as one of the most critical parameters for the success of coalbed methane recovery. It is also a key parameter for enhanced coalbed methane recovery via CO and/or N injection. Coal permeability is sensitive to stress and cleat compressibility is often used to describe how sensitive the permeability change to stress change for coal reservoirs. Coalbed methane exploration and production activities and interest of enhanced coalbed methane recovery increased dramatically in China in recent years, however, how permeability and cleat compressibility change with respect to gas species, effective stress and pore pressure have not been well understood for Chinese coals, despite that they are the key parameters for primary and enhanced coalbed methane production. In this work, two dry Chinese bituminous coal samples from Qinshui Basin and Junggar Basin are studied. Four gases, including H , N , CH and CO are used to study permeability behaviour with respect to different effective stresses, pore pressures, and temperatures. The effective stress is up to 5 MPa and pore pressure is up to 7 MPa. Permeability measurements are also carried out at highest pore pressures for each adsorbing gas, at three temperatures, 35, 40 and 45°C. The experimental results show that gas species, effective stress and pore pressure all have significant impact on permeability change for both coal samples. Moreover, the results demonstrate that cleat compressibility is strongly dependent on effective stress. More importantly, the results show that cleat compressibility is also strongly dependent on pore pressure. Cleat compressibility initially decreases with pore pressure increase then it increases slightly at higher pore pressures. However, temperature only has marginal impact on permeability and cleat compressibility change