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This study examines the wood trade in response to China's new logging ban policy in natural forests (LBNF). Our identification is based on a triple-difference (DDD) strategy, in which the variations in the staggered policy implementation with region and time, together with the different trade responses between forest products, are jointly exploited. Our estimates show that the LBNF simulates an additional solid wood import by 15.2%, while the wood export and trade in other wood-related products were not affected. Heterogeneous analyses reveal that the growth in wood imports is mainly from low-income countries with less stable trade relations with China, which indicates a very limited potential for the future global market and the rising risk of China's wood supply. Unlike the generally optimistic forecasts in previous studies, our findings update the expectation under the new policy shock and restate more practical actions to promote domestic wood supply in China.

The enhanced key-food-web offshore restoration technique by wall roughening is proposed in this approach. Three kinds of wall roughening, i.e. artificial reefs, hard slope roughing and the integration of artificial reefs and hard slope roughing are applied to enhance the original key-food-web offshore restoration technique. The effects of ecological rehabilitation of the proposed enhanced key-food-web offshore restoration technique are predicted by the models of Ecopath model and ocean health index. The results indicate that the ecological rehabilitation of the enhanced key-food-web offshore restoration technique with different wall roughening is better than that of the original one. Among them, the enhanced key-food-web offshore restoration technique with the integration of artificial reefs and hard slope roughing is the best. After using it, the restored offshore ecosystem is the most mature, and the ocean health index is increased to 87.1 or 87.3 with respect to the case of 2% or 0.57% artificial reef for the conservative or optimistic analysis.

Restoring rivers has become a common practice in the management of natural resources. While the ecological rehabilitation of river corridors is a clear objective for project planners, it cannot necessarily be assumed that the public will perceive the effects to be aesthetically positive. To assess people's perceptions of the visual attractiveness of restoration scenarios, we conducted a representative Switzerland-wide survey using photographic simulations and related the reported preferences to experts’ assessments of the ecological integrity of these scenarios based on eco-morphological criteria. We further considered how natural the public perceived river corridors to be and how much these corridors satisfy public needs. The results of the survey show that aesthetic preferences relate more positively to eco-morphological quality than expected, and that the public's aesthetic preferences are primarily influenced by perceived naturalness. Even slightly improved eco-morphological quality was rated higher aesthetically, which suggests that the aesthetic outcomes of even small efforts to restore rivers are viewed positively by the public.

China has undertaken two of the world's largest ecological rehabilitation projects-the Natural Forest Protection Program and the Sloping Land Conversion Program. This paper presents our historic perspective on the two projects, reports their preliminary impacts, and discusses the challenges in carrying them out, including the "top-down" administration, lack of interagency cooperation and long-term planning, and neglect of appropriate technical practices and market-based approaches. We argue that if properly implemented, these projects can contribute to China and the world in combating the pressing environmental problems of soil erosion, flooding, and desertification as well as climate change and loss of biodiversity. To implement the projects properly, however, major policy and technical changes must be made. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Land-use structure information is of significance in evaluation of soil loss owing to the contributions of various land-use patterns with different relative importance to soil and water conservation. In previous studies, a land-use structure characteristic index (SI), defined as the sum of products between each weighted land-use type and the percentage of the impacted area in the whole test region, was proposed to reflect the resulting impacts of human factors and serve as an indirect measure of soil loss variation. In this paper, the SI was modified with consideration of spatial distribution of land-use in terms of the minimal distance between a specific land patch and a river, either the main stem or one of the primary tributaries. A topographic factor was also introduced to correct the SI. Soil loss was evaluated with support of GIS through a case study at Zhifanggou, a small catchment in the Yanhe watershed in the middle part of the Loess plateau. Comparison was made between the soil losses before and after the adjustment of land-use types since 1987 according to the governmental ordinance aiming at ecological rehabilitation. It was found that the land-use adjustment in the last 12 years has been in a fight direction toward minimizing soil loss, but the difference of the actual SI in 1999 and the predicted SI corresponding to the potential optimal land-use structure implies that more efforts should be made in land-use conversion in the coming years.