Ecosystem carbon sequestration service supports the Sustainable Development Goals progress

Exploring dynamics relationship between carbon emissions and eco-environmental quality in Samarinda Metropolitan Area: A spatiotemporal approach

Carbon emissions have a negative impact on climate change. Environmental quality has faced significant challenges in the last decades. Eco-environmental quality helps assess the condition of the ecological environment to support humans' civilization and development. By using emissions raster dataset, remote sensing images, and LULC data, this study explores the status of carbon emissions (CE), eco-environmental quality (RSEICs), and the dynamic relationship between both variables in Samarinda Metropolitan Area, Indonesia. This study uses the spatiotemporal approach to deepen the understanding of CE-RSEICs during 2000-2021. The methods include the analysis of CE and the principal component of RSEICs. To understand the CE-RSEICs spatial features, the directional distribution ellipse method is used. Also, this study performs CE-RSEICs coupling analysis and identifies its LULC type composition. The findings show that CE status is still on an increasing trend, concentrating in the eastern region and keeping expanding during the period. The location of the low-emission ellipse is in the southwest, while the high-emission ellipse is in the east and intersects with the core cities. The mean RSEICs value is between 0.2878 to 0.4223, which indicates that the eco-environmental quality is categorized as fairly poor to inferior. Greenness, wetness, and Csink have a positive impact on RSEICs. The very poor-class ellipse is located in the inland region, and the very good-class ellipse is in the coastal area. The CE-RSEICs coupling status shows that the majority of the area has a weaker coupling degree. However, the higher coupling degree is concentrated in the population center and built-up region, which is the settlement area. The dominance composition of settlement area in higher coupling degree shows that settlement area has an impact on increasing CE-RSEICs coupling degree. So, sustainable low carbon development in coastal metropolitan area must continue to be carried out by considering CE-RSEICs and its spatial aspects.

Identifying carbon sequestration's priority supply areas from the standpoint of ecosystem service flow: A case study for Northwestern China's Shiyang River Basin

Finding important supply areas helps maintain the ecological security of the region and promotes the creation of healthy ecosystems. By considering the ecosystem service flows (ESF), priority provisioning area studies can be approached from a new perspective. This study describes the real supply in terms of flows. The goal was to reveal the priority-ranked supply pattern of ecosystem carbon sequestration services (ECSS) in the Shiyang River Basin (SRB). First and foremost, soil respiration models and Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) model were used to examine the supply of ECSS, and a combination of natural and human factors was used to determine the demand for ECSS. Second, Python was used to illustrate the ECSS flow trajectories and flows. Lastly, and utilized in conjunction with System Conservation Planning (SCP) to determine supply regions of importance. The results show that, first, the spatial distribution of ECSS supply and demand clearly demonstrates heterogeneity. This is reflected in the spatial characteristics of supply, which are "high in the south and low in the north," and demand, which is "high in the urban areas and low in the suburbs." Second, the middle and lower portions of the basin, where there is little precipitation and little vegetation, are home to the majority of the locations with poor carbon sequestration fluxes. These areas accounted for almost 60 % of the entire watershed area over time. Third, the first priority area of ECSS occupies 19.3 % of the basin's total area, while the second priority area occupies 21.46 %. For the major supply regions, strict ecological protection laws must be implemented going forward in order to ensure the ability to sustain ECSS supply. The long-term growth of SRB as well as ecological and environmental management can benefit from this research's foundational role in policymaking.

Using the Conditional Process Analysis Model to Characterize the Evolution of Carbon Structure in Taxodium ascendens Biochar with Varied Pyrolysis Temperature and Holding Time

Temperature determines biochar structure during pyrolysis. However, differences in holding time and feedstock types may affect this relationship. The conditional process analysis model was used in this paper to investigate the potential to affect this mechanism. The branch and leaf parts of Taxodium ascendens were separately pyrolyzed at 350, 450, 650, and 750 °C, and kept for 0.5, 1, and 2 h at each target temperature. We measured the fixed carbon and ash contents and the elemental composition (C, H, O and N) of the raw materials and their char samples. After plotting a Van Krevelen (VK) diagram to determine the aromatization of chars, the changes in the functional groups were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), Raman, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results revealed that pyrolysis at temperatures between 450 and 750 °C accounted for the aromatization of biochar because the atomic H/C ratio of branch-based chars (BC) decreased from 0.53-0.59 to 0.15-0.18, and the ratio of leaf-based chars (LC) decreased from 0.56-0.68 to 0.20-0.22; the atomic O/C ratio of BC decreased from 0.22-0.27 to 0.08-0.11, while that of LC decreased from 0.26-0.28 to 0.18-0.21. Moreover, the average contents of N (1.89%) and ash (13%) in LC were evidently greater than that in BC (N:0.62%; Ash: 4%). Therefore, BC was superior to LC in terms of the stability of biochar. In addition, the increasing ID/IG and ID/I(DR+GL) ratios in BC and LC indicated an increasing amount of the amorphous aromatic carbon structure with medium-sized (2~6 rings) fused benzene rings. According to the CPA analysis, an extension of the holding time significantly enhanced the increase in aromatic structures of LC with temperature. But this extension slightly reduced the growth in aromatic structures of BC. All indicate that holding time and feedstock types (branch or leaf feedstock) could significantly affect the variation in biochar aromatic structure with respect to temperature.

Unraveling the research trend of ecological civilization and sustainable development: A bibliometric analysis

Ecological civilization has emerged as an innovative form of civilization in China, and sustainable development has been widely recognized as a globally leading development model. These two concepts are closely related. The international English literature focuses on hot topics in the field of sustainable development such as climate change, urbanization, government management, and ecosystems, while the Chinese literature emphasizes ecological civilization concepts with Chinese characteristics, such as green development, beautiful China, and scientific development concepts. Ecological civilization and sustainable development are both responses to resource, environmental, and ecological crises and have emerged from the same historical background. The two concepts complement each other, with ecological civilization providing an ideological foundation for sustainable development, and sustainable development serving as the implementation path and concrete manifestation of ecological civilization. To deepen research on ecological civilization and sustainable development, it is necessary to build a global community with a shared future, address the major strategic needs of different countries or regions, innovate and develop interdisciplinary theories, methods, and technologies, strengthen international cooperation, provide disciplinary support for ecological civilization and sustainable development research, and provide country-specific research solutions for global and regional sustainable development.

Unveiling the environmental efficiency puzzle: Insights from global green innovations

The latest surge of global uncertainty and disruptions in global supply networks put policymakers under pressure to emprise green innovations as a vital tool to address environmental concerns. However, producing green innovations doesn't always help in achieving environment-related sustainable development goals. Therefore, in this study, we endeavour to investigate to what extent green innovations are efficient in improving environmental efficiency. To this end, a network bias-corrected data envelopment analysis and clustering analysis is applied. The data used in this study covers 42 countries from different regions, spanning from 2000 to 2020. The results reveal that most countries have not made major advancements in environmental efficiency signifying the low level of green innovations utilization to achieve environment-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). Additionally, the results demonstrate a U efficiency curve for inputs-oriented green innovations efficiency over time, indicating that the initial stages of green innovations production are associated with a decreased return. However, over time, the efficiency exhibits an upward trend. The benchmarking analysis reveals that South American and European Union nations set the bar for other countries in terms of efficiently leveraging green innovations to achieve SDGs. Our findings also suggest that environmental efficiency is more dependent on green-supporting policies such as green energy production and green taxes. As a result, we conclude that achieving environmental SDGs while utilizing green innovations does not always result in the development of other SDGs. Therefore, policymakers need to prioritize pursuing a green developmental approach and supporting policies to achieve environment-related SDGs and other SDGs.

Review of Geopolymer Nanocomposites: Novel Materials for Sustainable Development

The demand for geopolymer materials is constantly growing. This, in turn, translates into an increasing number of studies aimed at developing new approaches to the methodology of geopolymer synthesis. The range of potential applications of geopolymers can be increased by improving the properties of the components. Future directions of studies on geopolymer materials aim at developing geopolymers showing excellent mechanical properties but also demonstrating significant improvement in thermal, magnetic, or sorption characteristics. Additionally, the current efforts focus not only on the materials' properties but also on obtaining them as a result of environment-friendly approaches performed in line with circular economy assumptions. Scientists look for smart and economical solutions such that a small amount of the modifier will translate into a significant improvement in functional properties. Thus, special attention is paid to the application of nanomaterials. This article presents selected nanoparticles incorporated into geopolymer matrices, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, nanosilica, and titanium dioxide. The review was prepared employing scientific databases, with particular attention given to studies on geopolymer nanocomposites. The purpose of this review article is to discuss geopolymer nanocomposites in the context of a sustainable development approach. Importantly, the main focus is on the influence of these nanomaterials on the physicochemical properties of geopolymer nanocomposites. Such a combination of geopolymer technology and nanotechnology seems to be promising in terms of preparation of nanocomposites with a variety of potential uses.