Land

As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Dujiangyan Irrigation District is a key area for Chengdu’s rural revitalisation. However, as the plan progresses, issues have emerged, including loss of traditional features, cultural heritage, and landscape degradation. Within the framework of “landscape information collection—landscape information processing—landscape information output”, the study utilized literature review, field surveys, and remote sensing interpretation to collect data for the years 2000, 2010, and 2020 as time slices. A system of landscape characteristic elements was then built to identify the types of landscape characteristics. The types were determined, and a systematic analysis of the regional landscape’s evolution was conducted. The results indicated that the types of landscape characteristics were classified as follows: Urban Settlement Landscape (8.70–16.10%), Low-Hill Forest Landscape (1.82–3.47%), Village Woodland-Grove Landscape (15.89–44.23%), and Idyllic Agricultural Landscape (36.20–73.59%). Over the last two decades, there has been a steady increase in Urban Settlement Landscape, a slow overall growth trend in Low-Hill Forest Landscape, a rapid growth trend in Village Woodland-grove Landscape, and a rapid decline in Idyllic Agricultural Landscape. Among these, built-up land dominates Urban Settlement Landscape evolution; forest land shapes Low-Hill Forest Landscape; cultivated and built-up land influence Village Woodland-grove Landscape; and cultivated land drives Idyllic Agricultural Landscape changes. Based on the changes observed, the study explored the impact of relevant policies on the landscape characteristics of the study area. Policies for urban-rural integration have encouraged the networked growth of settlement landscapes, creating a system with several centres. Both ecological and economic gains have resulted from forestry practices. Policies that safeguard farmhouse forests have made multifunctional transformation easier. Large-scale farming and ecological agriculture are now linked in a zone established by agricultural modernisation strategies. The study offers scientific references for the protection of regional landscapes and the construction of rural living environments in the irrigation area.

Mining is an important industry for the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs), but it results in a significant amount of degraded land worldwide, thereby affecting local social and ecological sustainability. Little is known about the extent to which this degraded land adheres to the current SDGs. In this study, based on public geographic information data, the status of SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land) for global mine sites was comprehensively assessed. The results show that (1) the global aggregation index for SDG 11 and 15 in mining areas increased from 23.94 in 2000 to 24.48 in 2020, generally exhibiting a positive trend. (2) For SDG 11, all four indicators indicate improvement, suggesting enhancement of the sustainability of cities and communities surrounding global mined land, as well as urban development, mining activities, and economic growth. In contrast, regarding SDG 15, there were noticeable improvements in the water body area and land reclamation ratio, but the forest coverage ratio and net ecosystem productivity significantly declined, indicating continued stress on ecosystems caused by mining. (3) Less than 1% of mines globally met the green grade in SDG 11, and around 97% were categorized as red grade. For SDG 15, no mines reached the green grade, and at least 99.74% were categorized as red grade mines. (4) Globally, the status has exhibited obvious spatial clustering, and the region with a better status is in the equatorial region. There has been obvious spatial heterogeneity within countries, and mine sites near urban areas have had a better status according to these SDGs. The main influencing factors on the status of mines, according to the SDGs, include the degree of mining disturbance, ecosystem recovery capacity, and urban expansion. Overall, the global status of mines according to the SDGs is far from expectation, indicating a considerable gap from achieving sustainable mining and necessitating efforts to improve human habitats and restore ecosystems in mining areas. Future endeavors should focus on strengthening site specific assessment and long-term monitoring of the global SDGs in mining areas to provide foundational data and scientific evidence for sustainable mining and the realization of SDGs. 

Ecological resilience serves as a critical foundation for regional ecological management. As a fundamental unit of ecological governance, a watershed integrates natural, economic, and social subsystems into a complex composite system. However, the mechanisms linking human activities, management behaviors, and natural processes to ecological resilience at the watershed scale remain poorly understood. To address this gap, this study takes China’s Erhai watershed as a representative case and develops an integrated evaluation framework for assessing the resilience of a watershed-scale natural–economic–social composite system. The framework combines resilience measurement, coupling coordination analysis, and scenario simulation using the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) method. The results indicate that the overall resilience of the Erhai watershed increased steadily from 2005 to 2020, with the average value rising from 0.23 to 0.42. However, spatial disparities in resilience widened, reflecting challenges of uncoordinated regional development. Fiscal revenue was identified as a key driver of resilience enhancement, as higher fiscal capacity promotes greater investment in ecological protection and environmental governance. Scenario simulations further revealed that the conservation-priority policy scenario achieved the highest resilience, characterized by stronger infrastructure development, improved environmental management, and increased investment in social security and health, supported by sustainable tourism. These findings provide theoretical and practical insights for promoting coordinated and resilient watershed governance in China and similar regions worldwide.